Deathless
by Laryna6
Summary: A mysterious reploid killed hundreds before it was finally defeated by General Sigma. If only that was was the end of it. Infected by a virus designed to horrify the survivors, his victims can't rest in peace. Neither can the Red Demon himself.
1. Chapter 1

_What happened is, while I was writing the Lifesaver chapter of Wear & Tear, Vampire!Zero occurred to me. I wanted cheerful crack with Iris in a wedding dress. Instead I got this weird magical realism/technobabble thingy, which I posted awhile ago._

_Then, it merged with the zombie thing that was part of the imagery of the original Wear & Tear chapter (the word doc of which had the working title Zombie XD), and this resulted. This thing is horror genreish. On the other hand, it's less actively horrific than a lot of the stuff I label horror. _

_This has been in my documents folder for years. The plot went into a dead end, and I had to delete half of three different chapters, but I finally decided on an alternate plot and ending._

_I wouldn't call this a crackfic, but it's an 'I wonder what would happen if…' fic centered on taking a concept and watching the ripples not just from the concept itself, but what would cause Dr. Wily to go with that idea and what the goals of that tactic would be. _

_Koschei the Deathless is a sorcerer from a Russian folktale who can't be killed. It's discovered that he removed his soul from his body (alternatively, his heart or his death) and therefore just destroying his body does nothing. Rather like nothing's going to happen to the player if you kill the PC in, oh, _Bioshock.

* * *

The Irregular Hunters had been created to bring misbuilt reploids in for treatment and take down malfunctioning mechanaloids. Sometimes, a defect would give someone paranoid delusions, or one of the many people learning how this technology worked would mess up the target parameters of a mechanaloid meant to kill tunnel rats.

This was the first time they'd encountered an irregular specifically built for combat. The fact that, according to Sigma, it was only at a mechanaloid's intelligence level? Grunts of anger and appreciation instead of words? And it still destroyed more than two units and countless civilians? And they still couldn't find its creator, who might be working on a second, even more dangerous model, one without this defect?

That was a nightmare, in and of itself.

Perhaps someone had been innocent enough to ask how this could get any worse.

No, even if fate had been tempted, even if everything had been going too well up until that point, humans easily accepting reploids and the two races living in harmony, the events of that day were tragic enough.

What happened that night was simply excessive.

At least most of the bodies had already been recovered and brought to the morgue, both to determine the cause of death (besides the obvious, of course) and try to make them look presentable, for the sake of the friends they'd left behind.

At least only a few were left there, buried under the rubble from blasts and desperate charges.

At least the morgue and the examining rooms had very thick walls, just in case an internal reactor did something unforeseen or a patient broke loose before their mind was fixed.

At least the ones still out there, searching for the bodies, were irregular hunters and police. Mostly. And were armed. Mostly.

At least Dr. Cain's body had already tired (how strange it was to be glad of his friend's illness) and he'd left for the human hospital (all this stress and grief…) before the sun went down.

But there were too many people in the morgue. Too many engineers had volunteered to help with the aftermath. Too many people, both reploids (so young) and foster families had stayed, to stand vigil over the ones they had lost.

But weapons didn't help when people were taken by surprise, or were too shocked, horrified, and finally panicked to use them. When they were faced with a comrade or a civilian and didn't realize, not until it was too late. When they were simply outnumbered, and there were enough to mob the ones who realized that something was going on in time to try to protect themselves.

There was simply no precedent, outside of trashy literature that few reploids had ever heard of, for what happened that night. X himself was something out of legend, a relic of a long-lost family, awakening after a century of sleep.

It still wasn't the same as what happened that night. It was one thing for someone to wake up from sleep, even hibernation.

For the dead to walk was something else entirely.

Mindless, thankfully too mindless to use their weapons or dash boots. Due to the large surface area of their feet, without dash boots reploids were quite slow. It was easy enough for humans and reploids with dash boots, like practically all the hunters, to simply outrun the walking dead. If they had warning.

And they had to run, because the dead were hungry. They weren't intelligent enough to identify or make use of e-tanks. No, whoever had programmed this virus had identified one target, one source of the energy and materials they needed to remain functioning.

The living.

It was entirely too cliché, to those who read those books, watched those movies. A horrible, horrible… just a sick joke, to write a virus like this. That had zombies eat the central processors of their victims, where the most repair nanites and rare materials were. That left the virus in their systems, keeping their reactor on, just a trickle, hijacking their systems to create more virus to puppet their bodies, make them rise, walk, kill.

It took them entirely by surprise. X himself was working with two others, trying to adjust the equipment they had hooked up to the mysterious irregular, beat its anti-scan defenses and try to find any information they could. Who had made it, what had gone wrong, had anything gone wrong at all or was this deliberate, how could they fix it so that it could testify or stand trial: so many questions. There were three more in the observation room, a thick pane between the operating theatre and that room, and a thick door to the outside. This was a dangerous prisoner, after all. The most dangerous reploid ever built.

And they didn't even know the half of it. Not then.

X and Dr. Cain had already applied the obvious fixes, a few chips, extra repair nanites, and it hadn't woken up. The irregular was still restrained, but not especially strongly. They'd assumed that something else had been wrong with it: the restraints were just the normal ones, because one of the hunters had pointed out that this might be a trap. Who knew what the person who had built this… killer might have programmed it with? It might be playing possum, waiting for the right moment to strike.

Waiting for nightfall.

The room was buried in the building: none of them knew that the sun was about to set.

None of them knew that the irregular was about to wake up.

Its eyes snapped open, and an instant later the doctor leaning over it made a sound that might simply have been a squawk of surprise. Perhaps he'd meant to call out a warning, but he only had a moment to gasp, and he only had that much time because the irregular's first attempt to punch upwards was restrained by the cuffs.

A reflexive sweep of its hair removed that obstacle, and it lunged up, crushing the humanoid model's unprotected throat before its eyes swept the room, still holding the body.

The second doctor was close and lightly-armored enough that all the irregular had to do was throw the body at it to knock it into racks of equipment, chemicals and scanners. They'd had to resort to acid, at one point, to weaken the irregular's armor enough to force open the catch that locked the armor of its right arm in place.

The accuracy of the arm, the finely-sculpted muscle was highly suspicious. Would someone who went to that much trouble really mess up so badly as to produce a reploid that couldn't talk? Although genius in physical design didn't always mean genius in programming.

The doctor wasn't anywhere near that finely made, neither in aesthetics nor protection. The acids, sharp objects and haywire electrical equipment, as well as the impact, were enough to take him out of the fight.

Perhaps he might have been able to struggle to his feet at some point, try to clear his head. Perhaps he wasn't unconscious the entire time. No one ever questioned his story. Not when staying down was the only reason he lived.

That left X, shocked into combat mode by watching two people die (or so he thought) in front of him in less than a second.

And the shouts of surprise coming from not just those watching from the other room but the surrounding rooms, not that he figured that out right away.

He was able to dodge the first lunge, transforming an arm into his buster, and X's shot was enough to make it keep its distance a bit, after observing the amount of damage he'd done to the operating table.

X and the irregular circled the table, X trying to get over to the two injured medics and charging a shot. He wished he'd done more than just test out his buster's functions. He'd have to weapon-copy some non-lethal techniques from the hunters, he thought as the two hunters stationed outside burst into the room.

He went for the wounded, intending to get them out of the room, away from the irregular, but X only had enough time to confirm that the first doctor was dead before the irregular had ducked under the first hunter's shot, up into his face. Grabbing his left arm, he pointed the buster at the other hunter, grinning and using his grip on the body to try to pull the arm off. Sometimes, that kind of damage to the buster casing could cause it to blow up or go off, so the second hunter was forced to keep his distance, trying to get a clear shot.

They were both so _afraid_, X saw, both the one trapped and helpless, trying not to cry out but finally screaming when his arm was ripped off and the one wanting to reassure his friend but knowing that any words would be empty.

A moment later, the irregular threw that crippled body at the other hunter. If anyone had really had a chance to study the irregular's tactics, it would have noted that it made use of objects in the environment, and the body of an injured comrade was both a weapon and a _distraction_. The second hunter caught him by reflex, giving the irregular an opening to lunge around and to the side and attack his back, except the angle was different enough that X was finally able to use that charged shot without worrying about hitting someone else.

The doctor in the observation room had stuck his head into the morgue to call for help, but quickly shut the door and reached for the phone instead. He flinched when the irregular crashed into the fake glass pane, but it didn't crack and he kept talking.

The irregular _grinned _when it looked up at X, because this might be _interesting_, and it was terrible, chilling, and _infuriating _to the surviving hunter. Well, the one injured by the irregular was still alive, but for how long? The power surges had reached his core, and without treatment that X certainly couldn't provide while they were under attack? His partner charged forward, wielding a beam saber, but the irregular had gotten a chance to study that weapon earlier, fighting Sigma.

It had liked it.

It wanted one. The pipe it grabbed to fight Sigma hadn't been glowy.

The support strut for one of the scanners it grabbed, really just a hollow metal tube, wasn't anywhere near as resilient as a beam saber or a properly reinforced pipe, but it did the job, smashing the hunter's arm aside so the irregular could get at its head, punching it, sending the lighter hunter back before lunging forward to drive that pipe into its throat.

Even that was really a distraction, though, even if it _did _like the shiny weapon. The hunter was no threat, but the shot from a few seconds ago had hurt.

As did the one that hit it as it bent down to take the saber.

X had a distance weapon, but this wasn't a large room and it was full of equipment. The irregular seemed to excel at lunges over short distances, and X had no combat training. If it could bat a hunter's weapon aside and close so easily, it could certainly do that to him if he gave it a chance.

He fired quickly enough to hopefully keep it busy dodging as he tried to circle so he had space to maneuver in (being forced back against a wall would be fatal). He was only able to land a few shots: the irregular was so fast it almost seemed to blur, and there were simply too many things to keep track of.

…was that buster fire and screaming he heard? Not his own, not the screaming of anyone in here. When X could next glance at the observation booth, he saw the door was open to the main area, but why was that hunter's armor cracked through? Why did the doctor in the observation room seem so panicked?

What happened to the doctor stunned X, enough that when Zero next lunged, X tripped on a wayward piece of equipment that had been kicked onto the floor in the scuffle. In a flash, the irregular was on him, slicing through his buster arm at the shoulder and pounding the beam saber through X's stomach into the floor.

Then, it stood, eyes sweeping the room again. No more attackers.

There was still fighting going on outside. It looked at the scene in the observation room, seeming to wonder about whether or not it should do anything about that. It seemed to decide it didn't care. The fight was over, anyway.

While thinking, it had taken a few steps towards the observation window. So, when it finally decided it was safe, it crouched down over the bodies of the hunters. Its hair swept over their bodies, before it reached down, seeming bored, and ripped open the head of the first one, picking through the contents. Nothing really appealed to it, X saw, still conscious. Again, it cracked the head of the second open like an egg, knocking the circuits down onto the ground. It picked one up, licked the nanites off of it, before making a thoughtful sound and biting in.

Its reaction could be summed up by the word 'ick,' and it tossed the chip aside. X's gasp drew its attention. It met his eyes – X had tilted his head to see what was going on – and looked vaguely surprised. Probably that he was still conscious, after more than enough trauma to send an ordinary reploid into shock even if nothing vital had been hit and no power surges had been triggered.

It moved over, kneeling next to him as it had the others, and X winced as he tried to move away and the beam saber cut into him with that slight movement. The irregular's head tilted forward, and what had seemed like a casual brush of its hair over the others turned out to be more: strands of that hair stabbed down into him like needles, hidden by the mass. They hurt, but just like pinpricks. The missing arm, still bleeding nanites and fluids, and the saber stuck through his abdomen were far more painful.

The irregular bent to lick the stump of his arm. It made a surprised noise, seeming pleased, and licked again. Now it was purring?

X began to feel dizzy, and wondered if it was the wounds, pain or fluid loss. This… wasn't good. At least someone was still fighting, even if the sounds seemed further away. He wondered if he should shut down flow to his shoulder, direct the nanites elsewhere, but at least this was keeping the irregular occupied. It left off for a moment, but only long enough to pick up X's severed arm, licking what it could from that before it grew stale, before returning to X.

After awhile, X had no choice but to shut off the fluids, not if he wanted to stay conscious for much longer, even though he knew that the irregular might smash open his head as it had those of those poor hunters. He left the repair nanites futilely trying to do something about the damage (he doubted he could regrow an arm, but reattaching it was likely possible), to see if that counted.

The irregular's purring stopped. It made a disappointed sound, then an aggrieved, questioning one. It tried lapping harder, than pawed at X's shoulder before pulling back and looking down at him, somewhat annoyed. It pushed at his chest again, seeming more like a petulant child than a ruthless killer.

Except, X was aware, at some point it would stop being mildly irritated and take steps. Perhaps by ripping off his other arm.

Instead, it pulled the blade from his stomach before bending to lick that wound. X tried to move, but he felt incredibly dizzy and it was far worse when he even _thought _about moving. Not to mention the strands in his systems, pinning him in place.

At least gravity kept the fluids in his stomach in place, mainly, except for those trying to scab the wound over. The damage reports informed him that they were succeeding, despite the rasping of that tongue. It was almost closed when the irregular jerked up, giving a low, threatening growl.

The hunter, the same one that had killed the other doctor, pulled back, before stalking forward another step, making a sound between a moan and a growl.

The irregular was unimpressed, batting at it lightly. Or at least it seemed like a casual backhand, until X heard the crash and managed to see that the hunter (something was very, very wrong) had gone flying into the fake glass, the same as the irregular had earlier. It emitted a sound almost like a strangled whimper, trying to get to its feet and failing, remaining slumped down on the ground.

Just from that? No, not just from that. The missing armor had been ripped off, and were those open wires showing, sparking? X shook his head, trying to clear his vision. It was like there was some foreign substance on the surface of his optics, clouding them.

The irregular, satisfied, returned to its meal, lapping up the last on X's stomach before callously turning him over, first lapping up the blood that had spilled on the floor (and not oozed down the hole left by the blade) before doing the same to the hole in X's back, the exit wound left by the beam saber.

It hadn't bothered to stick its hair back in, after it had removed it so that it could move X, and X realized that this might not be an oversight. He really didn't think that he could move. Something _was _interfering with his movement programming and his inner ear equivalent. That mass couldn't simply be raw materials, even if they seemed like that was all they were to the nanites he had investigate it. Even _thinking _about trying to get up was just unbearable now.

An interesting, if unpleasant, way to paralyze an opponent, he thought, as the wound in his back closed and he found himself wondering what the irregular would do next.

Apparently, flop half on top of him, leaning on an elbow and poking at his neck with the free hand, undoing his helmet and prodding the exposed area with a claw, looking for a weak point.

Then it bit.

The sensation was indescribable.

The word good was inadequate. Orgasmic it certainly wasn't, even if X's one experience with that had been just testing the system and not all that impressive. Even sexual pleasure was a mounting desire coupled with a hunger, and there wasn't hunger here. Not on his part, anyway. Nor any sort of crescendo.

On the other hand, it wasn't exactly soothing, or tranquilizing, even if it had that effect. His fear and stress had fallen away, and his attempt to be alert and do something had been defeated, this had certainly accomplished that.

Another interesting way to keep the prey immobilized, he thought, but there was an odd echoing distance to it, and it was impossible to muster any ill will against the irregular, even after seeing it kill. Even if the poor thing couldn't help how it was made or what it had been programmed to do. It might be clever, but even if it had the capacity or raw intelligence to think or speak, it hadn't been led to do so. It might not understand anything but what it had been doing so far: hunting, killing, feeding. Surviving?

Everything felt so distant. Not quite the dreaming state he knew so well, after so long in his capsule, but familiar. Comfortable. As though every indicator was green and certainly nothing was wrong. Ah, that must be it, it was tweaking his status inputs as well as the resultant emotions. Causing him to feel as though everything was alright, that this was exactly as it should be. No reason not to just fall asleep and let the irregular that was making itself seem familiar have what it wanted. It seemed to be enjoying the meal, purring against his back before pulling him up a bit, onto the irregular's lap as it knelt.

Like opium, a painkiller that worked by making the human patient too happy, pleasured to care about the pain, the chemical interfering with how their brains judged such things.

X couldn't even focus enough to keep his head from lolling bonelessly to the side. His eyes were open solely because it would have been an effort to close them. Tired, tired, so tired, low on energy from all this draining, needing to heal, and like this it was hard to tell himself that he needed to stay awake.

A chance to wake up and another surge of adrenaline happened when another hunter's broken body entered and the irregular surged forward, knocking it through the still-open door this time. It jammed the door closed, hard, throwing the table, the other bodies, and quite a jumble of equipment against it, in a makeshift barricade that it then kicked a few more times for good measure, trying to make it stay.

He wasn't dizzy anymore, X realized, as his eyes focused on the drawer that held the e-tanks for administration to patients. No, he was dizzy, but disrupting his signals had insulated him from that feeling that he was going to shake apart if he moved. The irregular draining him this much had insulated him from whatever it did to incapacitate him, but now he was in the red on system resources and about to be incapacitated by that. He had to move fast before he fell unconscious.

The irregular ignored his movements, although X was sure he was aware of them. X wasn't a threat and the intrusions were an annoyance. There were more vacant-eyed and, in some cases, empty-headed ones looking in the window now, and it made X shudder as he pulled the drawer open and drank.

Fortified, he realized too late that the e-tanks were restoring not just his proper movement programming but the connection between him and the status of his body. Either he would be able to move soon, instead of merely crawl, or he would soon be incapable of moving, trapped by that awful vertigo again. Whichever came first.

Holding another tank, he tried to crawl towards his arm as the irregular stalked over. Observing what he was trying to do, it kicked the arm over to him, which felt oddly considerate of it. X shook his head as he tried to sit up and attach the arm, knowing how irrational that feeling was. How stupid it was to think that the irregular wouldn't hurt him.

He was still confused, clearly not thinking clearly. Even if trying to move resulted in a horde of error messages, as though he didn't already know that something was very wrong, he should have done more than try to lean away a little when it knelt down again to pull him to it, lap at his neck to find where the bite had been before the e-tanks had healed it before biting in again.

Clawed fingers were clasping at his shoulders, but X's eyes were drawn to the window. He shouldn't have pulled back against that chest, away from the terrible things staring in this direction with a combination of fear and hunger. Shouldn't have felt relieved when dark, red-veined wings wrapped around him, shielding him from the sight of those, those things. Certainly shouldn't have shuddered with relief, at that strange consideration. Shouldn't have assumed it was consideration instead of just wanting to keep its prey to itself. If it wouldn't let… those things have X, then X very much doubted it would allow X to be rescued, either.

X could still hear buster fire, in the distance, and other sounds, and he could hear some of the things beyond the window moving away, in search of unguarded prey.

He could feel his arm reattaching, settling in place more firmly, but the teeth at his neck dulled the ache.

He shouldn't have yawned, not when it should have caused those fangs to rip an even larger hole in his neck. They shifted instead, allowing him a little give so he didn't slice himself on them.

Was the irregular just hungry? Just trying to be safe while it fed? How much had it taken from X? X knew that he had redundant amounts of repair nanites. They'd also stuffed the irregular full of them while they were trying to fix it. Was this just peckishness, as opposed to real hunger?

He didn't really know enough to speculate, and he felt so very tired.

He was allowed to lie down on an oddly soft wing (only a thin layer of padding, but textured), the irregular moving down with him. It was odd how companionable it felt. Was the irregular really cuddling, or was that a delusion?

Sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

_The working title of this fic was 'Ghoul,' for a few different reasons._

* * *

It was the barricade that saved them when the hunters reached the lab. By then, they'd learned to shoot first and been forced to admit that everyone who had been in the morgue was lost. The one eyewitness account they had was the doctor who had called out, and he'd seen the irregular itself attack X before another zombie killed the doctor.

They would have shot to destroy the body, to keep it from rising again: Dr. Light had ensured that if his son died, no one would be able to profit from it, looting his body for the technology to create more children to kill, so with X dead they wouldn't be able to study his systems any longer. A tragedy, yes, but just one more tragedy in a sea of them.

The barricade was jammed in position solidly enough it forced them to pause and send for cutting equipment. Dr. Cain wanted a report, and they were surprised enough to see X lying half on top of the irregular. Since when had it had wings? Had X taken it with him? Who had constructed the barricade, anyway? If X had won, and built it before doing the smart thing and settling in to wait for rescue, then he certainly wouldn't have chosen to nap on top of a corpse that had already sprung to life once.

Any hope of that was lost when the irregular woke up first and the ones who had been watching it (clustering around the window and gawking and whispering) yelled for Sigma.

It was that noise, as well as the whine of the cutters starting up, that made X stir. At the time, no one thought in terms of X being special or immune, or especially strong. Even if he had been built by Dr. Light, he was just another scientist, not even a hunter.

The irregular sat up and stumbled back a bit, wings disappearing, which dumped X onto the floor. Even if it was more a roll than a fall, the impact was enough to startle him awake the rest of the way. He sat up, rubbing his eyes and looking cautiously at the people staring in. He was just as alarmed as they were. That many of the crazed ones trying to break in? With tools?

Without the irregular's nanites in his system X had no desire to dive behind him for cover. Instead, he grabbed the fallen e-tank before standing up, trying to find something resembling a defensible spot before the sleep-haze dispersed and panic died down enough for hope to rise and let him notice that, wait. They didn't seem blank or hunger-crazed, but just as worried as he was, under the veneer of hunter discipline.

The fact X's buster was charging had already raised a red flag for a few of them, a hopeful one. The dead didn't use tools or weapons, even built-in ones. It was when he lowered it that a few more noticed the difference, and then he went over to hit the intercom. "Are you… yourselves? What happened out there?"

It was General Sigma that hit the intercom in the observation room. "According to the report, you saw for yourself."

"The irregular suddenly woke up." X half-turned to keep an eye on it, raising his still-charged buster in its direction. "He… Both of my assistants were dead almost before I turned around, and the guards came in to help… I'm sorry, Sigma." He hadn't been able to do anything for them, when Sigma had already lost so many. "I saw a hunter whose chest armor had been torn off come into the observation room and kill Dr. Cain's friend." So many had arrived for this, X still hadn't learned all their names. "The irregular used the beam saber it took from one of the guards to remove my buster arm and pin me to the floor."

"I… did?" It was a shock to hear that quiet, honestly confused question. The irregular knelt on the floor, clutching its helmet. "Are you talking about… me?" They had to be, it realized, raising fluid-stained hands. "What happened? What did I do?"

Within a few hours of its appearance there were already people who wanted the dangerous irregular destroyed instead of captured, who wanted to use bombs on it instead of letting Sigma go in and risk the first reploid getting himself killed. After this? It was sealed in stronger restraints, basically welded to the wall with strips of metal in the examination room, after Dr. Doppler was taken outside to be repaired and the bodies of the two hunters were destroyed, just in case. The body of the other medic was sealed in a box and taken to the smelter, so they could see if it woke up or not, and, if it did, push the box in before it got loose.

* * *

"You _really _don't remember anything?" X asked again, for the record and the benefit of the others listening, from the observation room. No one was allowed in the exam room with it now, obviously.

It shook its head. "Just waking up now."

"We need better readings," X said, mostly to himself.

"I can guard you while you set up the equipment," General Sigma offered, standing near X's right shoulder, internal com on as he coordinated recovery efforts. They hadn't even had a chance to complete the casualty report, and so it was hard to identify which ones had been killed by the irregular sometimes, although if their head or chest had been ripped open and chips extracted that was generally a clue they'd been killed by the ghouls or zombies. Or it would have been if X hadn't reported seeing it eat a chip.

So they had to destroy all the bodies they recovered, to be on the safe side, except human ones.

X looked up at him, surprised. "I thought you were going to forbid me to go in there."

"He doesn't seem hungry, at the moment. He protected you from the others, you said, and didn't finish you off." As he hadn't finished off Sigma. "Keep talking while we're in there," he ordered the irregular. He told X that, "If he loses the ability to talk, I want you to run for the door right away."

"Alright." X nodded.

* * *

The body in the box as well as a few stray missed corpses rose that night, proving that secondary infections were possible. It wasn't just the irregular's victims they had to worry about, but the victims of those victims.

"It's not an accident," X told the irregular, designated Case Zero. "This is a deliberately designed computer virus. Someone infected you with it and turned you loose to spread it. Stop looking like that," he scolded him. "This isn't your fault. You're a newbuilt, there's no way you could have built yourself or written something like this." It still took quite a bit of work to drill into the irregular's systems to do any work or get a nanite sample, but they needed the information. "We're lucky we have you, otherwise it would be practically impossible to get pure samples. The virus is uncannily good at hiding." Not that it wasn't doing an admirable job of hiding in Zero's systems as well, but at least they knew it had to be in here somewhere. They had a few quarantined zombies, but their nanites and fluids seemed normal. At least Zero's had the grace not to. If they could figure out what the differences were, then they had some hope of figuring out how it was hiding itself. Or perhaps Zero's atypical nanites were what allowed him to have a mind, to think despite being infected? They'd tried the repairs they'd done to Zero on a few zombies, but no luck. While X and Dr. Doppler hadn't been rendered mindless, that might just be because they hadn't been killed. Zero had, and he was still capable of sentient thought.

That made him their only hope for a cure twice over.

The third night there was only one outbreak, and none on the fourth, so the situation was labeled contained, for now, even if the news channels were constantly speculating about the irregular's origin. Or rather, Case Zero's. He might not be an irregular after all. This may have been a deliberate terrorist attack, meant to turn the public against reploids. Or that was one theory, anyway.

To keep it confined for study or eliminate it to eliminate the virus? X, Dr. Cain and General Sigma, the hero of the incident, all argued for the former. Until they had a cure or knew who was responsible for this, killing Zero wouldn't get rid of the danger. It would just destroy their only clue.

Most of the civic-minded reploid researchers had turned up to help after the irregular's attack, except for humans who didn't have the option of teleporting. They had to arrive by plane, which was difficult to coordinate, so the people clustering around the observation window to stare at Zero and theorize increased slowly over the course of the week. Dr. Doppler was still in the hospital: he might have survived, but he'd still gotten a lot of dangerous chemicals where they certainly didn't belong and there was far too much internal damage for it to be safe to stress anything.

Or that was the diagnosis he was given, since no one wanted to force him to go back. It was much safer for humans to be there. Not only were humans immune, but since the zombies didn't use distance weapons most humans could escape from them on foot easily enough. Except the hoverchair-bound like Dr. Cain, who was kept on the top floor of another secure building.

"If whoever's behind this was trying to eliminate the competition, anyone who might have come up with a counter to his virus, he succeeded beyond his wildest dreams," that was the consensus. "I'd appreciate any data you can send me, but I'm not flying in, and I'd advise anyone who doesn't actually need to be on the ground there to leave and make Irregular Hunter HQ a less attractive target," was the response of one of the researchers who was asked to come help.

Some people thought that was suspicious and investigated him, but even they had to admit that it was sensible advice. If paranoid.

Still, this was the first case of what amounted to biological warfare since the Cataclysm. They actually did have to think of this in terms of enemy action, and who would do something like this?

"A madman."

"Well, obviously." No one in their right mind would do something like this, it was simply unthinkable. "The question is what _kind _of madness, and how do we figure out who it was? If split personalities are fair game, then _I _could have done it and not know. So could you."

"I don't have a split personality," X said, quite relieved. "That was part of what the testing was for. I'm aware of everything that goes on in my mind."

"That's nice, but while reploids have that capability _theoretically_, they don't know enough about themselves to identify a fraction of what they detect. The split personality or madman theory doesn't rule out any suspects whatsoever. In fact, if we want to bring that up, the most likely culprit would be that irregular of yours. He doesn't remember any of the killing, after all." Or so he claimed.

"Actually, he's in the one demographic group we can rule out," Dr. Cain reminded the Chairman.

"Reploids under two months and humans under ten." Those too young to have learned enough to come up with anything like this. "His other personality could be an accomplice, however, even if it probably isn't intelligent enough for that." And what this madman's first test of his virus didn't know, it couldn't tell the world. Case Zero not knowing anything made good tactical sense, frustrating as it was. "So that brings us back to the question of who could build something like this." The Chairman tapped her fingers on her desk. They were all aware that, in terms of capabilities alone, she was looking at the two most likely candidates. The fact that X had survived (as had Dr. Doppler, who was under observation) and Dr. Cain had been elsewhere when so many had died was another piece of circumstantial evidence. "Keep us posted." The Chairman didn't want to suspect either of them, but if nothing turned up this was going to turn into a witch hunt. Investigating them both fully and clearing their names early on was the only way to prevent them from being targeted, and they needed them working on this.

"We will," Dr. Cain promised.

* * *

"His condition is still deteriorating."

"So it was exponential." X had noticed the curve, and what the analyst was showing him was a logical extension of it. "His internal temperature is decreasing due to drops in activity and power output…" It had only been six days since Zero had woken up in the lab, and he was sleeping most of the day.

"At this rate he may just drop dead on his own."

"You may be right, sadly."

Oh?

Seeing the researcher's questioning look, X explained, "He took down over two units of hunters. We all know that's simply not normal. Then there's his constant need for repair nanites and e-tanks. His performance curves may have been so high because he burnt all of his components out. The hunters tried to subdue him by using hacking nanites to activate his safety features: that simply put him even more into overdrive. He doesn't seem to _have _safety features." Looking through the window at the sleeping blond, who looked amazingly like a naked human with all his armor removed and the restraints covering certain areas for decency's sake, X grimaced. "His design is so unusual that there's only so much we can do to repair him. He will only accept a handful of replacement parts, so if he really is wearing them out at this rate…" There would be no need to destroy him. "It may be intentional." Not only had it made Zero extremely dangerous, but this way the evidence would destroy itself.

He rested his right hand on the false glass. Zero even _looked _sick: a human's head wouldn't lie at an angle like that, unconscious or not, unless they were dead. Reflex would jerk their head up to protect their windpipe. X hadn't even known what was disturbing about that position until one of the scientists with a background in human medicine told him. Both reploids and humans were living beings, so medicine was a much better fit than Dr. Cain's paleobiology background. "Let's see when he wakes up." How long after dark.

* * *

The first sign that Zero was awake was a groan: his arms twitched, confined by the metal bars. X turned the intercom on. "Zero?"

"Hungry."

Zero must _really _be out of it. He normally wouldn't have used that word, not when everyone had told him what he'd eaten (what X had seen him do), nor would he sound so plaintive. Normally he sounded apologetic, asking for an e-tank. His speech patterns were those of a disciplined young man, not a boy. A sound that verged on a _whimper_ would normally have been beneath his dignity.

"Don't worry, I'll bring you another e-tank and more mineral powders," X said, trying to soothe him as he had other injured newbuilts.

"_Hungry_," Zero repeated, with emphasis on the word, frustration: was he trying to convey something else by repeating it. "I don't… It's hard to…"

"Dr. Light… I don't think you should go in there." Not when the patient was trying to warn him.

X turned the intercom off before replying. "I'll take the guards in with me, but if the hunger really is returning, that's likely a sign it's going after the chips Dr. Cain and I installed, either that or they're burning out as well. I need to get a look at them." Drill another hole into that forehead to fit a miniature camera in, take photos until Zero's nanites destroyed it and closed the wound. "Those, we can replace." That would buy them more time, at least. Time to find Zero's builder, time to find a way to save him.

Zero drank the e-tank, but it barely affected his energy readings at all. He actually thrashed a bit when X started to drill, apologizing a second after he did it, and was barely able to hold still. "Does it hurt?"

"No, it's…" It wasn't that it was scaring him, it was that part of him was seeing it as an attack, even though it wasn't as though X would lie to him about that. "I can't… stay still, focus…" His legs twitched as well. He felt cold, except where the drill touched him. Where X's hand touched him. The heat spread, and he gasped for air.

Were his coolant systems really that far gone? X wondered, noticing that. "Would you mind bringing me a cold gel-pack? They're in the third drawer down there," he asked, pointing it out to one of the guards. "He's starting to overheat." Not only was that a very, very bad sign, but it was proof that Zero was in no shape to attack anyone.

That was when the metal bars fell away from the wall, sliced through by unseen knives, and Zero fell down onto X. Or was that _tackled _X.

Oh, X realized, teeth in the side of his throat and mind trying to panic. The overheating must have been caused by Zero's systems forcing themselves to combat readiness. How silly of him not to realize that the heat had to be a byproduct of _something_. He'd thought it was simply fear of the operation, even though he'd known Zero wasn't just any newbuilt.

Zero had to be very far gone, because the last time this had happened, he dealt with potential threats before feeding. X could feel what had to be buster shots hitting Zero, the body on top of his jerking but refusing to let go, even when one of the hunters was brave enough to try to kick him off.

It barely counted as a fight. Zero was three-quarters dead, unarmored, and occupied. The only challenge was removing his teeth from X's neck without injuring the android further, getting the irregular off him before anything happened.

Like, for example, Zero's body suddenly deciding to self-destruct.

Thank goodness that without weapons systems, and his energy storage degraded into the red, the blast was underwhelming. One of the hunters was a bit singed, but X was alright. Some of the equipment was ruined, but most of it already had been.

The rest of the night and the following day were taken up by reports and speculation, trying to figure out what had happened and where they were going to go from here, without their only clue.

Then, the following night, another irregular attacked another city. Except this proved that it wasn't an irregular.

If Zero had been defective, then whoever had made the model wouldn't have mass produced it. No: the new one was identical to Zero. Except smarter. During the first attack, Zero hadn't used weapons until he'd seen Sigma's beam saber and found a pipe. When he'd awoken, he'd recognized the beam saber as a useful weapon and acquired one, not to mention showed a little more ability to plan than he had during the rampage, when he had simply gone from one target to the next, hunting, instead of bothering to make use of defensible positions.

The first battle with Zero had been during the day, as well. When he wasn't at his full strength.

Still, they could only be grateful the next one had struck at dusk. It gave them a full twenty-four hours before the bodies started reviving. Hopefully enough time to destroy the bodies and the demon before it received reinforcements. Hopefully.

Except this version of Zero was smart enough to retreat from superior opponents, like Sigma and hunters using ride armor, unless it could get the drop on them. This one vanished when dawn came.

There was far more rubble this time: hiding the red demon, providing obstacles for hunters, and hiding the bodies.

After a night like that, capture was no longer an option. Sigma was forced to call in an air strike when it surfaced the next night, once they were able to confirm where it was, amid the chaos and zombies searching for food in an evacuated city. They managed to confirm the kill and pulled back, letting local human volunteers clean up the zombies as per the hastily-organized operational plan. If the only reploids in an area were zombies, that cut down on friendly fire, and while humans were too easily injured to fight intelligent reploids armed with busters and dash boots, they didn't have to worry about infection and could run rings around slow, shambling zombies that didn't have the brains to try anything complicated, like playing dead to get them close enough to grab.

The evacuation and clean-up went swimmingly, which would have been cause for celebration if everyone weren't waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Which it did, the next night.

Right on schedule. The question was, whose schedule was it?

* * *

Three of the squishy ones, of various sizes. They weren't edible, but seeing them still made him smile, imperative changing from _survive _to _eliminate._ Killing was fun. The squishy ones stopped moving after he hit them once, but generally he had to chase them or stalk them, so it wasn't over _too _quickly. Of course, if he ran around too much chasing them, then when the hunger returned, it was stronger, and there wasn't even the temporary satiation one of the heavy ones gave him, until his body realized that no, this wasn't enough, this wasn't how they were _supposed _to be. So maybe he didn't like the squishy ones after all.

Still, better than nothing. Crouching down, he let himself savor this, the data coming in from all this senses, except for his own body's reports which were _quiet_, _shutting up for once_. The need to eliminate them was there, but then there would be the kill to savor.

It would be easy to kill the three of them at once, especially since he had already found a stick. It wasn't a shiny stick, but hopefully one of the heavy ones would have one.

The heavy ones might not show up until he killed enough squishy ones? That was what happened before. There might even be fun heavy ones again, and after the first fun heavy one… He couldn't read the data that well, but at some point in there, survival programming had shut up because it was satisfied.

So, he had to figure out how to do that again. He hadn't killed the fun heavy one, so maybe if he fought it and didn't kill it again?

_There_. Two of the squishy ones went squish, and his stick lashed out to hit the biggest.

There, that noise! That was the good thing about the squishy ones, when they saw another one die they made noises so he could find more of them. The first time, it brought in more squishy ones instead of just bringing him down on them, but the second time it made the squishy ones run.

That was no good. If they got out of range, then they weren't triggering him to eliminate them and survival programming could take control. He hoped these squishy ones lasted until heavy ones got here. Luckily, he could hear a few in that building, and it was one of the ones with walls that were easy to break.

He had just fished one out from within a tiny space with even thinner walls and hit it back into the space when one of the burning things came through a wall. Oh, one of the heavy ones in one of the heavy things! Those were tough, and he had to use a lot of energy, which survival programming didn't like, but if he got it down enough, then survival programming would let him sleep when there was light so it would be replaced.

So, he had to find a place he could climb up, and see if it would follow him so he could kill it… Maybe there were more around! Sometimes there were lots of the heavy ones at once. And one of them might have a glowing stick, or even be the fun one! He _liked _that one.


	3. Chapter 3

_Wing-maiden was kind enough to let me use her drawing Tainted as the cover image of the fic. Since her request was the next chapter of this fic, I'm posting it early._

* * *

"We're obviously…" Buster fully charged, X fired. "Dealing with an evolving AI. It's…" Again. "Remembering what it's faced before, copying what works, avoiding what doesn't, and devising simple solutions to problems with trial and error." He frowned as the simulation finished and graded his performance. That was no good at all. Yes, he'd been trying to do it while talking to Dr. Cain, but it wasn't as if battlefields weren't distracting places.

General Sigma was probably right: he was just no good at this at all. He'd tried to request training, but everyone was too busy. No one could be spared to try to teach him not to shoot his foot off, especially when they really did need every researcher they had. Still… He did have these capabilities. And this armor. He should at least learn to protect himself and Dr. Cain, because at the moment it wasn't if but _when_.

"Agreed. It's learning too slowly for its creator to be upgrading each version with solutions to problems. If Dr. Light is correct, that sentience is a prerequisite for sapience, planning and problem-solving, it's not a simple mechanaloid following its programming, either. We're dealing with a borderline intelligence." No mere animal capable of 'learning' that was really Pavlovian training, but something dangerously clever and simultaneously without the sense to think beyond immediate consequences. Sentient beings like humans and reploids thought a couple hundred steps ahead before breakfast. "Unless we're dealing with a childlike intelligence that simply hasn't figured out that it should do that yet."

"I hope not. If whoever did this copied my self-configuration programming…" The 'infinite potential' that was part of why he'd been sealed away, so his developing mind did its experimentation in simulations instead of dealing with cause and effect in the real world, discipline by universe or by… something like this.

"A being of infinite potential," Dr. Cain quoted glumly. "He_ is_ learning." And fast.

"Dr. Light estimated it would take five years before I could handle anything complex, like language," which was much more than dictionary definitions that could be put into a database, "much less conversation. Case Zero didn't start from the absolute beginning like I did, he clearly has elaborate movement routines," combat routines, "but we simply can't last long enough for him to evolve to a state we can negotiate with. If he ever does." Currently he was evolving into a more and more efficient killing machine: those were the skills he was honing, living and dying like this. They needed him to be able to grasp things like social skills and realize that hurting people was bad. Not to mention counterproductive. In his current state, how could he be exposed to any stimuli that would cause him to evolve the capacity for peaceful interaction? "He _did _understand those with the chips we installed." The cut-down version of X's evolved solution sets that reploids were given to start with, along with the other basic programming like how to handle visual data and walk upright.

"Some people think that whoever's behind this can't keep providing new bodies forever. That if we keep destroying them, we can track materials requests, something."

"Each Zero lasts longer. Beyond a certain point? The destruction of so much infrastructure, the scramble to rebuild? Even with the danger, reploid factories, no, everyone is producing as much as they can. The investigators may be trying, but you know how little oversight there is." Dr. Cain and X's company was still the major builder of reploids. "Everyone wants more defenses, more weaponry: who_ isn't_ building a private army?" They weren't going to be able to find anything in this mess.

"You really do think that trying to capture one is the best option?"

"If there really is only one at a time, at least that would buy us some time." The trouble was capturing it in the first place.

"Zero only lasted for a week, and each one would be harder to capture." Even in the wild, they got weaker over time. So far none of the replacements, if they were replacements with copied programming instead of a single entity with backup technology, had survived slowly starving _while being shot at _for a full week.

"He said he was hungry. You saw the list of his component elements." They'd analyzed the pieces left behind after he self-destructed. Zero had been suffering from advanced malnutrition after a week on the standard reploid diet. "If we can figure out how to keep him healthy, keep him _alive _long enough for the intelligence we install to gain control over his systems, find us _something_ we can use, or if nothing else we'll have him here to study?"

"If nothing else, while he's here the hunters won't have anything but zombies to deal with." Dr. Cain nodded: they both knew he basically agreed with X and had just been playing devil's advocate.

"That's what really worries me," X confided in him, punching up another scenario. "When the Zero we fixed protected me from them, he didn't seem to see the zombies as anything more than an annoyance. Competition for food. He's beginning to really master basic tool use," as of last week he'd started setting power generators off, after someone had thrown him into one, "and from Sigma's last report he's demonstrated enough understanding of what they'll do in certain situations to take advantage of it. Use them in distractions." That was _theory of mind_ in action, even if zombies were predictable, governed by the virus. "That's still just taking advantage of… local conditions." Where there was a zombie hoard, where there was cover from sunlight. "But if he starts actively using them as tools? We don't know how much control over them he could theoretically have, if he had an incentive to learn how to use it, and I don't really want to find out."

For instance, they'd verified that Zero had a built-in buster, and he'd still never used it. Given how eagerly he'd taken to the beam saber, he would be using it if he knew he had one, so the buster would only remain unused until something made Case Zero figure out how to transform his arm. What other capabilities were there, waiting for the unit to become smart enough to use them? Unless whoever had programmed this virus had done it solely for personal amusement, it made sense that they'd give Case Zero the ability to control as well as spread the virus, for maximum effectiveness and terror.

If Case Zero gained awareness of that capability? If it could give the zombies orders and upgrades based on other things it had figured out for itself? Like, oh, the ability to use their busters and dash boots? Right now, humans, even civilians, were _almost _safe, provided they moved fast enough when there was an evacuation order and didn't do anything stupidly overconfident when they went back in to clean up the zombies. If that was no longer true?

"I understand why the Council doesn't want to sink resources into an attempt. We are talking about an intelligence upgrade," Dr. Cain said, grimacing. "We don't know whose side Case Zero would end up on. Yes, the one we studied truly regretted what happened, but repeating the process might not produce the same personality. And if it broke loose and we returned to square one, if the original version retained some of those upgrades?" And they were suddenly dealing with an opponent with a vastly larger array of tools to play with? Like language and knowledge of how much it terrified its prey?

"An intelligence can be negotiated with. At the moment, we're practically dealing with a force of nature," to paraphrase Sigma.

"A walking unnatural disaster that just won't die." Dr. Cain had also been there for that conversation. "Well, we should get authorization within a month or two. I've already gotten everything together." 'A month or two' was dozens more 'Zeroes,' dozens more attacks on dozens more cities and refuges.

"What worries me is how he got out of both sets of restraints the last time." That was why X was practicing, because there had been an element of that conversation that Dr. Cain hadn't picked up on, nor had the video cameras. Humans, and most reploids, could only hear so many frequencies. Sigma was Dr. Cain and X's first creation: they'd built him as close to X as they could and the upgrade into a combat unit he'd requested had only added more bells and whistles.

It was rude to talk behind people's backs on frequencies they couldn't hear, but it was occasionally useful, when birthday parties were coming up, wounded hunters really didn't need to know how bad their chances were or there was something else Sigma didn't want to become public knowledge.

Like the fact he'd realized that Case Zero might in fact have a single weak point/safety feature/kill switch, after watching the same minor injury take him down twice, and they had to take advantage of this _soon_, before Case Zero figured out the weakness and its infinite potential system _did _something about it.

While mounting a huge capture operation in defiance of the council's orders would be treason, if Case Zero was simply dropped into their laps, then they'd really have no alternative but to seize the opportunity. But they could only seize it if they were ready to seize it, because having Case Zero break loose in the middle of the base again wasn't an option. There had to be multiple safety features, like bombs, or else it wouldn't be permitted.

So everything had to be ready, and everything had to go perfectly, without anyone having any idea that this was anything more than good contingency planning. Which was why Sigma hadn't given X any more details than that, neither of them had told Dr. Cain that there was a reason to rush on this besides convincing the council that yes, it was feasible, by showing them all the already-constructed defenses in depth and supposedly X was training for a theoretical capture operation he hopefully wouldn't have anything to do with (unless Sigma's gambit failed) instead of to make sure he could survive what he was actually planning to do.

He hadn't told either of them _that_, either.

* * *

It went like clockwork. Sigma called in, Dr. Cain scrambled to activate already-made plans and get permission/ask forgiveness with an aired of stressed but excited apology (they couldn't pass up this opportunity), the operation went like clockwork, and Case Zero was put in a room with very, very thick walls (and explosives built into it) to recover after the operation.

The one actual _surprise_ in the entire process was when X, quite calmly, made an incision in his arm, slicing along the main transport tube instead of across it, opened Zero's mouth, and let the fluids and nanites drip down.

"What are you doing?" The obvious question.

"The first time he woke up after this operation, he wasn't sentient right away. He fed and slept first. The mental decay was associated with hunger, and I don't think that it was just coincidence that he broke down and attacked when I was there, touching him, instead of one of the other medics. I have repair nanites on the surface of my skin, like humans have symbiotic bacteria. We've given him a custom mineral mix," X just ate human food every once in awhile to get the unusual elements he needed: the metal content in seawater that made fish a Catch-22 for humans made it perfect for him. "But I know this works." Zero needed repair nanites too, not just minerals. He really had been designed to feed on… "He's a carnivore." X realized. "That's what he was designed to be. Can he even _use _mineral powders? That would explain the decay of his systems! We assumed that certain repairs and processes would be happening, after all he'd repaired himself very fast during the rampage, but if he was designed to deal with raw materials already converted into a form usable for reploids, he might not be able to do that conversion himself."

"It seems rather foolish, to design a carnivore to carry a plague that would destroy its food supply," Sigma commented from the observation booth. He still hadn't gotten those scratches on his face fixed. Well, they were a badge of honor.

"Well, it is an incentive for him to find and attack reploids, if the goal was to spread the virus. The performance that we thought was because he was burning himself out may also be because of the simplicity of his systems. His metabolism would have to go through several fewer steps than that of the average reploid." Did Dr. Cain agree?

"If you're right, that's going to make it very difficult to keep him alive." It made sense, but he hoped X was wrong.

"Even having materials requirements that can't be found in the general population makes sense. Zero didn't drain me enough to kill me before he was full, but normally, Case Zero hunts constantly." It should have drained X and left the examination room to find more prey, not curled up around him. "It has to, because it can't get full. It can't satisfy all the materials requirements, so it has to keep hunting, trying to find what it needs." Two entire units, and more, all their materials and repair nanites available and they still weren't enough to satisfy the unit's programming because they didn't have what it needed.

"And all of its energy was going into hunting. Into trying to find a way to silence that craving." Aside from the occasional distraction from that gnawing hunger, an amusement that made the pain recede while its survival programming focused on something else instead. Like a dangerous opponent. "If it really was growing more intelligent… Cattle." Sigma's eyes narrowed, which was a truly frightening thing on a face like that, with those scars. Case Zero had wounded him, again, before Sigma had taken him down, and he'd been too busy to get repaired.

"Hmm?" Dr. Cain looked at him questioningly.

"The zombies. Once it became intelligent enough to control them. It could have had them seek out what it needed and then fed on them. By that time, the world have been out to destroy it in self-defense. It would have to eliminate humanity, and the free reploid population, just to survive. No. Dying wouldn't be an option. Conquest or eternal torment, those would have been the alternatives." Clever. Evil, but clever.

Dr. Cain shuddered. X monitored his own status, and reploids had a simpler, more idiot-proof hunger system that didn't require as much knowledge and attention to keep them from randomly collapsing because they'd ignored a warning they shouldn't have, but Dr. Cain was the only one of them who had ever brushed with starvation, on a long-ago expedition where far too many things had gone wrong.

"I hope you're both wrong," was all Dr. Cain could say to that. "I truly hope that you are." Because hunger wasn't something that could be fixed. Hunger was something that could only be staved off. If Case Zero was motivated by it, instead of programming or childish cruelty, then he would always be a danger, and the world would know it. All it would take was a little misfortune, the wrong things happening at the wrong time, and the red demon would be back.

And if Sigma was right, if someone really had thought all that through, then they weren't dealing with a simple-minded madman. They were dealing with a complete monster, able to craft complex, torturous plans, design a _child _like this, to live like this, for… for what? As some twisted experiment?

There was nothing to do but shudder at the thought, and wish he could take deep breaths. A pity the artificial respirator didn't allow that kind of control.

Since he could break free so easily, X convinced them not to bother tying Case Zero down. Bonds tended to indicate that someone was in enemy hands, and if this Case Zero didn't have the memories of the Zero they'd fixed it was a bad idea to start things off on the wrong foot.

This time, Zero didn't jerk awake at nightfall the way the last one had, awakening hunger jarring it out of sleep mode. Sigma had captured it a little before midnight, and the operation had been complete by an hour after noon. There were a few false alarms at various times in the afternoon, when the reploid twitched or rolled over to get comfortable, hair laying all spread out on the table.

Disarmed & unarmored, wearing what amounted to an overlarge t-shirt (hospital clothes for reploids got _tricky_ to design) and covered by a sheet (really a tarp, the one that had covered the operating table) Zero really did look feminine, Dr. Cain thought. Most of those watching through the camera feed or being shown clips as part of briefings or the news thought that something that terrible looking that cute when it slept was just wrong. Especially when the twitching turned to thrashing, and humans (who had them) recognized a nightmare. Reploids wondered what was hurting it, and tried not to feel sympathy.

A little after dusk it yawned, stretched, looking catlike and content, and sort of felt around itself. It seemed surprised by something and opened its eyes, turning its head this way and that, blinking as it sat up and the sheet slid down off its shoulders.

It saw them through the glass and turned towards them, making a sound that was both questioning and expectant. There was something that was supposed to be a certain way, and they should know that? Was that what the sound was trying to convey?

X turned on the intercom. "Zero?"

That was apparently better, or progress, at least. It stretched again. The conclusion that this was a nice 'morning' was visible. Even if people were being slow.

It seemed to decide that there was nothing wrong with being slow itself, yawned again, and went back to sleep, after rolling over to one side of the table. It almost seemed as though it was making room.

It next woke up around 3 am, and this time, after yawning and stretching, it jumped down off of the table in order to poke in the cabinets. It seemed to recognize the markings on e-tanks now, and went for the ones fortified with repair nanites. There was some discussion about whether or not it had learned to read, but it was probably just that it had seen so many of them, breaking into first aid camps for the wounded prey there. They were color-coded differently. X remembered using one himself: had Case Zero noticed that there were more nanites in his systems afterwards?

"Zero?" X tried again, after being roused out of sleep mode. He'd taken to falling asleep in corners when there was nothing going on these past few weeks, so that he would be available if they needed him.

It looked at him, and seemed to want to say _something_, but not quite know how. X shut the intercom down. "Did the chips not take this time?" Had it become resistant? "At least it's docile." Even if it had made a mess of the supplies, digging out what it wanted.

It came over to the false glass and pawed at it, which was quite worrying to most of the people in the room. It seemed to be judging how hard it would be to break through the safety glass, before deciding that it was full and didn't want to bother. Except there was something it wanted.

Activating the intercom, X pointed at himself. "Me?" Was that it? Did it just want company? It had let X sleep on it, after all, even after it had withdrawn its fangs.

"Me," the irregular parroted. "Me," it repeated, suddenly thoughtful, seeming to know what it was saying. "I'm… here again." Zero blinked. "I'm not hungry anymore." That was the last thing it remembered. "I don't feel sick at all." There wasn't any pain. "What… I'm sorry. I couldn't…" He'd been so hot, and water, blue was a cool color? The last of what he remembered was so muddled. "You were there, and…" He couldn't quite piece it together. "I attacked you, didn't I?" Had he? "Why wasn't I tied up again?" After doing something like that.

"You've demonstrated that doesn't do a thing to stop you, so there's no reason not to let you have a little freedom."

X looked at Sigma. Hush. "You don't remember anything between then and now?"

"I remember…" It was hard to think of it. "There was time between then and now." He hadn't just blacked out and come to here, there was stuff in between. "I was hungry, then full and sleepy."

While that was true, it wasn't the half of it, and could be nothing more than muddled memories of attacking X and the destruction of his body (and chip) last time, then after this chip had been installed. "How do you feel?" X asked.

"Full, but…" Now something else gnawed at him. He was in here, and they were all on the other side. Staring at him. They had to hate him more, after he'd attacked X. X looked kind, and Sigma stern but fair, but the others?

"But what?" X prompted.

"It's probably programming," he said, because he had no right to feel this way. And X wanted to know about his programming so that made it ok to say this. "There's no one here with me. There should be."

"Food, companionship…" Two of the hierarchy of needs. There was surely more to it than that, if he was supposed to need others to feed on for his very survival. Waking up without food nearby must be worrying. Still, for him to expect people to stay near him willingly meant that he ideally wasn't supposed to kill all his prey.

Of course, if he was supposed to feed on zombies that he controlled, could that really be called willingness?

"You aren't going to attack me." It was barely a question: X just said it for the benefit of those watching.

Zero shook his head. "I'm not hungry." He didn't want to hurt X, or Sigma's hunters.

"Let me know when you start to feel hungry again, even a little bit. We have a few more ideas than standard nanites and powders for trying to keep you from going hungry this time," X said soothingly, standing up and turning off the intercom.

"Are you…"

X nodded to the whispering hunter. He spoke in a normal voice: the intercom was off and he was facing away from the window. "Yes, I'm sure." He had his armor on, and it was better to experiment now than be surprised later. "There are concealed weapon emplacements in the room. Zero will hopefully be more relaxed if I go in alone." There wouldn't seem to be a threat. And Sigma had the controls. He'd be fine.

Zero didn't move when X came in or the door closed behind him (there were two doors, and only one could open at a time, among other precautions) "I didn't hurt you?" X didn't seem injured or afraid, that was good.

"Not really." He'd bitten X's neck and clung to his body, but he hadn't even unsheathed his claws to dig them in.

He seemed to pull back a bit in order to signal that there was room for X to sit down on the table. X did, and watched him. Zero lowered his head. "That's a relief." Thank goodness.

Just like last time, he didn't seem to remember his other victims at all.

"Are you sure you aren't hungry at all? I gave you some of my nanites. Do they contain everything you need?"

Zero looked at him, startled. X had _given _them to him? "I think so." Really, X shouldn't have. "I should thank you for saving my life." Except he wasn't, because he wished he hadn't been saved. He'd killed so many people, and now it was obviously even worse. X had told him about irregulars, about how people had gone on to live normal lives, but, "It's happened twice now, huh. Three times." After he should have been fixed. The stuff that had happened after he'd woken up, that might have been the cure needing a little time to kick in, but this proved that, "I'm not fixed, am I?"

"We should be able to find ways to keep you from going hungry again."

"Going hungry?" Didn't X mean going mad? Zero frowned. "If you can't cure me? I don't want to stay like this forever." Weren't there people who wanted to have him destroyed?

"I'm afraid that whoever built you reinvented backup technology." So Zero didn't have the option of the easy way out. "Not that this is entirely a bad thing." If Zero could be brought back, then if they found his maker, other reploids could benefit from this technology.

Wait. Zero looked up at him. "How did..." X find that out. "They killed me, didn't they. When I attacked you. So how did I wind up here again?"

"Backup technology," X repeated, thinking that was probably true. The virus remodeling a body it had taken after teleporting it elsewhere was also a possibility, one that he had pointed out when some people had tried to argue that Zero's builder would run out of spares eventually. The virus had taken hundreds of reploid lives, and there were _plenty _of bodies still unaccounted for, a thought that was surely giving plenty of people nightmares. He knew it terrified him, even if he was mostly sure the zombies weren't capable of playing possum deliberately. But, they could lie dormant, buried under the rubble until someone let them out…

"Yes, and then what?" Zero wasn't stupid. Even Case Zero was learning worryingly quickly.

"Sigma captured you again." Please let Zero buy that it had been that simple.

"Again, huh?" He was so much trouble… "Do I want to know how many people died this time?"

No. He didn't. He really didn't. X tried to think of a way to change the subject. "We'll need to track how long it takes you to become hungry again, and various aspects of your mental state." He should print out one of those survey things, one per day, and bring Zero a pen. "You'll have the run of this room, here." A vast improvement over practically being stapled to the wall. "Is there anything you'd like me to bring you?"

"I'm fine." Like he had the right to ask for anything that wasn't a necessity. He didn't glare at X, but he would have if he felt it was right, like he had the right. "Did you find out anything?"

"Well, we have a better chance of keeping you from going hungry now," hopefully X was right, and his nanites would work until they developed alternatives, "and hopefully you won't start breaking down again. We know about the backup technology, too."

"Nothing about whoever built me? What I'm for?" He half-turned away.

"We have… a few guesses. You feel lonely, don't you? You're supposed to have people nearby while you sleep." In case you wake up hungry.

Zero almost jerked, turning to stare at him. How did X know that? No, he'd said something, and X would have figured out the rest, but…

"Is that just for comfort, or do you need more nanites and resources that often?" Daily, or on a moment's notice, instead of once every few days?

How would he know?

"How long did it take you to become hungry again, last time?" X pressed him, even though he knew Zero was sick of thinking about it. He wished they had the option of letting the newbuilt curl up and die. Only without the dying part. Well, they'd find a way, so that he could live. Being fed from didn't hurt: if Zero could find someone who wasn't afraid, that would be nice. X took Zero's hand, meeting his eyes and wordlessly saying that no, he couldn't have it back.

Zero looked away. "I guess I was… a little, the next morning. It was there, but not bad. I didn't need very much."

"So you are supposed to have small amounts, often, instead of big meals? Or actually, it may be that all you needed were small amounts of trace minerals. The rest you would have gotten from the e-tanks." Fortified with repair nanites. "So, hopefully, it's just a matter of getting you those minerals. I can mix some into a tank if you're hungry now, we can try that."

Zero shook his head. "I'm not hungry." His hand tentatively closed around X's, holding back.

"Really?" X gave him a look.

"I guess I could drink an e-tank." There was room, but he really wasn't hungry. He did want something, but that was to bite down on X's neck. Not even to drink, just to taste and see if X permitted it and didn't move away. That would be enough, for now.

Except he was the prisoner, not X. X couldn't stay in this room with him all the time: what a stupid idea. What was he, a human child who needed a teddy bear? Or a baby, wanting a bottle?

How, how demeaning.

He hated this.

If only there was someone to kill to _make it stop, _instead of just prolong the agony, at the cost of even more death.

That thought: as if he hadn't already known that he was a monster.


	4. Chapter 4

_This chapter earns the M rating, for what I'm going to call 'attempted (mind)rape.' Mmm... it's less squicky than the implications of old-style vampire fiction?_

_The game series doesn't go into what it's like for Zero to be the source of the virus, and then finding out that he has to go into hibernation, or else curing the virus outside him will do nothing, he'll just infect another poor Sigma. The evil that he tries to destroy lurks inside him, and he can't destroy it, not even by letting himself be destroyed. _

_His body isn't his, it's a vessel for someone else's will, a will that seeks to destroy everything Zero cares about. Who knows when it will take his mind away from him as well? __Think about what that would do to anyone, but especially someone like Zero, who has made it his purpose to kill mavericks, who has watched countless people suffer and die (including Iris) because of what he was made, because of what was done to him and his body before he was even turned on. Consider that level of violation._

_While the intent of the programming was to violate X on that level, thankfully it didn't work, and the various psychological and social things that make sexual assault so devastating a way to permanently damage humans don't apply to reploids._

* * *

And thus, the world was saved, yet despite orders it wasn't long before enough 'slips' were made with the intercom on, when X wasn't there, for Zero to put two and two together and demand the truth from someone more than happy to give it to him.

Which left X to do damage control, after being woken from a sound sleep after a very, very long shift. Virus research was urgent, but just because he _could _work several days without actually sleeping didn't mean it was a good idea for him to do that. It took a long time for it to cause him to slip up, but they needed to figure this out and he did his best thinking in dreams.

So he wasn't exactly pleased to be woken up from one of those dreams, that fled as soon as he was given the news, and have to pull on his armor (they wouldn't allow him into Zero's containment unarmed) and teleport to base.

Really, he was grateful that disciplining the hunter who had told Zero this and the doctor who should have told him to shut up was going to be left to Sigma, because otherwise X would have given them a piece of his mind and he tried not to yield to those impulses. Whenever he got really angry at someone he was always left speechless for awhile, practically resorting to name-calling if he could get anything out at all, but when it had time to simmer, like while he was fumbling around trying to avoid waking up Dr. Cain in the next room, he had time to think up things to say, which he would then regret.

Zero had sprouted wings somehow, another mysterious capability for the list. A capability Case Zero didn't know about and hadn't used, thankfully. They weren't even built into the armor, since they'd disarmed Zero, or tried to. Apparently, like the claws, he could use them without it. When he arrived, X saw that Zero had pushed the left side of one of the cabinets away from the wall so that it was at an angle to it, creating a triangle that couldn't be seen from the observation room. X didn't know if Zero knew there were cameras watching from other angles. Perhaps he'd guessed and just wasn't thinking about it right now, or the cover wasn't to keep them from seeing Zero but to keep Zero from seeing them and the hatred there must have been in that hunter's eyes.

The wings made an effective barricade, at least psychologically. X couldn't see any part of Zero but them, the way they were wrapped around him, making him theoretically protected by walls on all sides.

Actually, it was no defense at all. The cabinets weren't especially sturdy for just this reason, and a charged shot would probably go right through the wings, if not for long. Zero self-repaired key areas _fast_, and when someone was airborne, wings were obviously vital.

"Zero, I know I've said this before, but it isn't your fault." No answer. X wondered why he'd expected one, really. "Yes, it was your body, and you feel you should have had more self control." The reasons Zero argued that it was All His Fault, among a few others.

It was too early in the… afternoon, technically, for this. Why couldn't they have done this to Zero at night? Zero was a bit more awake then, and X was effectively a night owl too, at the moment.

Frankly, he wasn't awake enough to argue with Zero, and Zero was probably in no state to be argued with, so X just gave up and decided to take the direct approach. "Zero? Let me in."

The wings twitched.

"Let me in," X repeated, letting just a _little _edge slip out. He'd already chosen the easy way to handle this, and he really didn't need Zero to make things difficult.

The wings opened, and X saw Zero kneeling there, back against the angle formed by the wall and cabinet. He went in and crouched down, allowing the wings to close back around him, like automatic doors. There was light in here, both from the top and the odd almost track-lighting striped on Zero's wings. X really did wonder why Zero's wings were… bioluminescent, effectively, since Zero was a living thing. It seemed an odd design choice.

But that wasn't why he was here. He was here to crouch down, finding a way to be comfortable sort of half on and half off Zero's lap, and wrap his arms around him.

It said something about Zero's programming, as well as emotional state, that Zero didn't argue. Zero, by personality, wasn't a touchy-feely person, and he was obviously afraid of getting close to others, in case he killed them and turned them into a zombie. Yet he leaned his head against X's shoulder and pulled his wings in a little tighter, as if to hold him here, instead of pushing him away, even if it was a few long seconds before his own arms crept up to wrap around X.

Alright.

Now, since there were no further objections, he was going back to sleep, and so was Zero if he knew what was good for him.

Actually, X liked sleeping. True, he had been in that capsule for a century, and he might have gotten sick of it after three times as long as he was supposed to be in there, but Dr. Light had taken great care in programming everything. It had simply been a very nice, very long dream. Timeless.

The first time he'd woken up had been very surprising, but he'd also met Dr. Cain and made his first friend. He'd met other people for the first time, begun to explore this world.

So waking up was also a wonderful thing. Lying there writing down notes or reading, in the sunlight that came in through his window. If he left it long enough, the patch of sunlight would spread to cover the entire futon he used at the house that had been built in Japan, near the site of Dr. Light's lab. It was extremely nice, with a good book or some research material, and he could even do a conference call without getting up out of the sun, if it was Dr. Cain or he turned the video off. Unlike his brother Rock, he wasn't solar-powered, but thinking that maybe Rock had spent mornings like this too sometimes was nice. It made him feel a little more connected to his family.

The first time X woke up, he wasn't alone. Dr. Cain had been standing over the capsule, hovering in case he needed help getting up.

This was only the second time he'd woken up with someone actually holding him. The second time he'd woken up with Zero holding him, specifically. And this time he hadn't fallen asleep knowing that zombies were staring at him hungrily and he might get eaten in his sleep.

It was a very nice thing, he decided, to wake up with someone there. Knowing that he hadn't been alone the entire time. The way he'd woken up the first time to discover that all of his family was dead. There had been no one watching over him, over the capsule.

According to his internal clock, it was thirty minutes before sunset, which was time to get ready these days. Stirring in Zero's arms, testing Zero's willingness to let go and what his odds were of slipping out without waking Zero up (but that wasn't fair, really. Zero should get to wake up like this) got a response from the sleeping… vampire.

X had to use the word, really. The fangs, the body clock, the bat wings. There was really no way around it.

The way Zero nuzzled at X's neck in his sleep was kind of cute. The first meal of the night was the most important for Zero, and tended to determine his mood for the rest of the evening. The longer it took him to become sated, the higher the threat level, perhaps? Even if it was a few days before he was in any danger of starting to lose track of reality and, judging from last time, a week before he lost it, although obviously no one was going to risk that.

The entire thing made him think of breakfast in bed, really. It was a pity Zero couldn't get out and meet people, because it really was very cute and there were people who liked the idea of vampires.

X was entirely unsurprised that, after a bit of nuzzling, when X pressed his neck against Zero's mouth a bit, giving permission, Zero's fangs slid in.

The way Zero purred was still very cute…

Oh.

My.

This was the first time X had let Zero actually bite since he had returned. He'd reported on the mental effects, obviously, but there were plenty of other tests to run before he opened _that _kettle of worms. If X had thought all this through he wouldn't have decided why not, since the mission was to keep Zero from being too depressed and feeding the way he was meant to feed could only help, but then he'd given himself permission to stop thinking and, well, it was a lazy warm morning, wrapped in wings instead of sheets. He was simply too comfortable to boot up quickly or be properly paranoid.

This time, there was no paralyzing disorientation: X blamed that on some venom in the hair, if not the virus itself.

This time, it wasn't the status system that got cracked. X had expected that same 'this is really nice' feeling. It would have fit well with the entire good morning theme. Hopefully Zero would have thought it was an especially nice way to start the day too, and would have been too busy trying to figure out what the hell X thought he was doing, given what Zero was and the whole situation, to focus on guilt tripping.

So he would have had Zero in a good mood _and _thoroughly off-balance. And Sigma thought 'Dad' had no tactical sense… Really. He might not be his famous older brother, but he wasn't completely helpless.

Except this was… unexpected.

Maybe the other sensation was for prey, and this was for people who Zero happened to find in his bed?

Not that they were actually in a bed. Or that reploids usually did this in a bed, anyway. Sheets tore and mattresses were too easy to kick through. Yes, having sex in the traditional human style (or as close as reploids could come, anyway) was probably a good way to rack up thousands of zenny in bills for the replacement furniture, if people were enthusiastic about it.

Not that X was in a position to move, much less writhe, when his sexual system was suddenly switched on, no, kicked into high gear. He really wasn't in a position to do more than gasp for breath, coolant system suddenly _entirely _inadequate.

Gasps turned to panting, but he vetoed anything that might sound like soft moans as his body brushed the dust off an unused system and the strain decreased. The pleasure didn't, no: X's arms and legs tightened around Zero as he took another slow swallow and there was nothing to do but push against those fangs and hold on for dear life, dimly wondering if Zero's creator had read the kind of trashy vampire romance novels mentioned in the book on vampires X had dug up looking for clues to either Zero's condition or his creator's psychology. Because this was very, very nice, but also cliché and excessive.

Very, very excessive… Also very, very good, but Zero was probably going to hate himself and Sigma was going to _kill _him. X, not Zero, for getting himself in this position.

Although it was a little hard to regret anything but the fact he was wearing his armor, so Zero's arms weren't actually touching his skin, and he knew the wings would be far more velvety if armor didn't lower tactile sensitivity drastically so people didn't feel too much pain when they were shot.

The cracked system was producing all sorts of… just pleasure, inside his head, registered as phantom touches to places no one could actually touch, but Zero's tongue was sort of licking at his neck, the fangs were a piercing delight, and there could have been cool velvet caressing his back, warm arms around him, a strong body… if not for these barriers.

He really hadn't thought he was capable of moving, of doing anything with his arms but clutching at Zero's back, that shift bunched up in his fingers, but he found himself clumsily undoing his armor catches. _Closer_. More open. That was the purpose of this one, in the same way the other one told the victim to just relax instead of struggling. That one made them hold still, this one…

If X was anyone else, if he wasn't so perfectly aware of everything that was going on in his mind, the virus would have been able to hit the psychological switches for obsessive love unopposed. It still hit them, and hit them _hard_, but it was simple enough for X to remember that it wasn't real and restore the original settings. It was a very good thing that oversight was an automatic process, as close as he came to a subconscious one, because otherwise he would have been far too distracted to check. This really was devastatingly effective, and it was hard to believe it was happening, because who would program something like this?

Maybe it wasn't a good idea to set Zero up with someone. This kind of mind control capability? Because this wasn't just fiddling with his inputs like the first time Zero drained him: this was a real attempt to break into and alter his _thoughts. _It was a _very _good thing X had taken leave of his senses last night, because otherwise they might have asked for a volunteer for Zero to feed on, for the data on how it worked and the chance to observe his systems, and a reploid wouldn't be able to fight off this kind of control. Doing that to someone's heart was _disgusting_, and Zero would have blamed himself, not just his systems.

He was getting really, really _irritated_, and his fingers dug into Zero's back now, tugging him close. X could have vetoed the urge to take off his armor immediately, instead of removing one or two of the more annoying pieces, but he knew his own mind. He'd wanted to go along with this, and now he was really angry at himself, because he'd basically let this programming set Zero up to molest him, or that was how_ Zero_ might see it no matter what X said. Really, it was more X taking advantage of Zero, because X was the one who was awake and had a chance of stopping it, even though a multi-pronged systems attack like this wasn't giving him a lot of options. Zero was having no say in this whatsoever.

He was angry with himself more than Zero's creator, X thought. He also shouldn't be angry about the fact he was having to think when something like this was happening. He was going to have to feel guilty about this in the morning, or rather the evening. Thank goodness Zero didn't have to... X very much hoped that he wasn't awake yet, that he wasn't watching while his systems _did something_, ignoring what he wanted. X was going to have to recheck every single one his settings manually, just to be paranoid and reassure Dr. Cain and Sigma, too. And then Zero might be afraid, from now on, that every bit of kindness X showed him was because of mind control, and… And this was probably being caught on camera, too, despite the shield of the wings. Wonderful. Simply _wonderful. _

And he couldn't break himself loose and force Zero awake because it was wonderful. This was just as damnably effective as the nausea Zero's systems used to keep X incapacitated while Case Zero saw him as prey even though X could fight off the mind control. No, partially because of what he had to do to fight off the mind control.

Keeping the virus from controlling his emotions and actions was keeping him from exercising self-control, since every time his systems overrode the virus' attempts to control him, they restored the default reactions, meaning his conscious mind couldn't override them, either. He'd try to get self-control, then the virus would try, then his systems would override everything and he was back to square one, the base reactions to stimuli. Even though, intellectually, he knew that there was more to this than just how it felt…

He might have felt something about Zero, for Zero, those last trembling instants even without the virus' interference, but because of the virus he couldn't let himself, and it was even more a frustration, being denied something wonderful, than succeeding in pushing away from Zero before the drain finished and the cascade hit would have been.

As he shut down audio output to keep himself from making any noises that would be caught on camera and make this any worse he felt almost territorial, wanted to grab Zero's face and seize his lips, mark them somehow, make Zero see him, see that this was about _them_, not about Zero's creator or the virus, the onlookers or anything else. What if Zero didn't want this, though? What if that made him _blame _X for this?

No, he should take responsibility. He deserved any blame he had coming to him. He should have found some way to put a stop to this even if his systems were going haywire because this was _important _and it was Zero who was going to suffer the consequences of this, not X. He knew very well who everyone would blame unless, and perhaps even if, X made his position very clear.

Part of him really did want to do that by kicking the cabinet out of the way so that he could push Zero down to the ground, but he doubted he had the skills to kiss Zero senseless or anything like that. It would be extremely out of character for him to start shooting cameras, either, not to mention the risk of setting something off and blowing them all sky-high.

Self-control or no self-control, he was very lucky that the afterglow somehow managed to restore that golden morning calm. The fact that he finally understood what people were talking about when they talked about wanting to kill something receded, eroded by this relaxing tide and awareness of the body around his. It was very hard to hate anyone on a bright, warm summer morning. Unless they were trying to force you out of bed for something ridiculous.

If it weren't for the attempted mind control and Zero's systems (so help him, if he ever got his hands on Zero's builder!), this was really a very nice way to wake up. It made him wish that he had Zero's ability to purr. He settled for letting out a slow, even breath and cuddling up closer to Zero.

Zero had just been jarred out of a very nice dream by someone squeezing him a little tightly (a combination of the virus trying to get X to come closer to Zero and X really, _really _wanting to strangle Zero's builder) and the realization that it was actually happening. "What… X?" Why was X here, like the first time Zero woke up able to think? He'd gotten the impression that wasn't going to happen again, and that was fine, he knew he wasn't safe.

They were testing out all kinds of things, but X's nanites were the only thing they were sure would let Zero feel full. If he killed X, he could spend the rest of eternity mad and starving, and he'd _deserve it_.

X ignored him, humming a bit, just softly.

"X?" Was he alright? What had just happened?

"That was very nice." X leaned up and kissed him on the cheek, eyes still closed, knowing without looking that Zero was staring and blinking.

"…X?" The movement forced Zero to recognize that X was around a third naked.

"I am sorry that happened. I hope you're not angry with me?" X asked, or rather yawned, taking shameless advantage of the fact Dr. Light had designed him to look like he was late teens at the oldest. He did cute quite well, when he wanted to.

"…What?" Why on earth would Zero be angry with him? For putting himself in danger by getting this close to Zero.

"Then can we please talk about this in the morning?" They both knew X meant later at night, compensating for Zero's warped body clock.

"…Sure?" Whatever X wanted. It was kind of hard to say no when X looked sleepy, and pathetic, and winsome, all cuddled up to Zero, who was very nicely full, and warm and aware X was the reason why. He was almost certainly the reason X seemed so very… relaxed, with what could only be described as bedroom eyes, and comfortable himself. Satisfied, in fact, which Zero was aware should bother him, since he knew his systems did weird things to people and he didn't want X to end up a zombie, it was just that X seemed anything but bothered and… He'd never noticed how pretty X was. Actually, of the two of them, maybe X was the one who really looked like a female model. Not that there was anything wrong with this. He'd never seen X unarmored, even partially. Soft, warm, trusting and… pretty. It made him blush, and want to look away to hide the blush, but that would have meant looking away from X and X was already cuddling up to him again, eyes closed, so he wouldn't see.

So he watched him sleep, quiet and amazed. There was really nothing else he could do, except nuzzle X's hair a few times, trying not to wake him and blushing again at the soft little sounds of appreciation.

* * *

"Did I ever tell you about what it was like the first time you fed from me?" That was where X decided to start, after putting his armor back on. Zero was helpful enough to use his wings to sweep it into grabbing range so X could do so without leaving Zero's lap quite yet.

"You said that it didn't hurt." Although he'd thought some of that had to be X humoring him. Now, though, he wondered.

"Your systems cracked my situational awareness. You made me feel as though…" X paused, remembering and looking for words. Zero studied the feelings that appeared on his face, at the memory, reassured. "I was safe. Despite the zombies." And the predator. "Like a warm, lazy morning, with family and nowhere else I had to be. I was aware that it was tampering, but a normal reploid wouldn't have been. Even so, it was very peaceful. A very nice thing to fall asleep to."

"You mean black out." Drained of 'blood.'

"No, I was drained, but it was sleep, not unconsciousness." X paused. "You've probably noticed that I fall asleep easily." In a corner of the observation booth, so he'd be there if they needed him. "It's not really a design defect, but it's an unavoidable consequence of the fact I had to be kept asleep for thirty years." It would have been all kinds of bad if he'd started fighting to wake up.

"That makes sense." Zero had just put it down to X being far too trusting, sleeping there where Zero could _see _him, especially after the first time they'd captured him, when he was growing _so very hungry_.

X considered explaining why he'd come by today next, to start that scene off, but that would remind Zero of all the people he'd killed, and that was the last thing he wanted to do right then. So, if he couldn't tell Zero _why _he'd chosen to fall asleep there, where to start without drawing attention to the gap?

No, he'd just omit the entire thing about X falling asleep in Zero's arms because Zero had needed a hug. "This time, well, it was rather different. When we repaired you this time, you seemed surprised that something was missing, and made room on the table. I think you were surprised that you'd woken up both full and _alone_. Your less sophisticated intelligence was expecting whoever had fed you to come rejoin you, I think." And Zero had said that he wanted someone with him, when he woke up. "So I should have realized that your body might handle pacifying prey differently from, well, showing thanks to someone who had fed you willingly." A bedmate.

"You're saying my body thought you were my…" lover?

"Well, it fits." X shrugged. "That was what the emotional aspect was suggesting, too. The first pacification method worked by causing…" the prey? Victim? "The source to feel certain emotions towards you. Trust. This one tried to cause emotions appropriate in a lover."

"It tried to make you fall in love with me?"

Thank goodness that Zero was saying 'it' had instead of thinking that _he _had. "Yes. Don't worry, it didn't work. I'm aware of my mental state, I just changed everything back. It was irritating more than anything." X grimaced at the memory, like he'd bitten something sour. "But I don't think you should bite anyone else like that. Not unless you're already in a relationship. It's a good thing we discovered this now."

"I guess." Zero would rather they'd never found out about it. That it didn't exist. It was one more thing about his design that was just _sick_.

"It's a pity, though."

Wait, was X implying…

So, of course, that was when X left to go find out who he had to do what to in order to make them keep quiet about the whole thing.

Zero had only been here a little over two weeks, total, but he'd already noticed that X was aware of the disarming effect being nice and considerate had on people, since X, Sigma and Dr. Cain were trading off dealing with the people who came in determined to get answers, willing to, _wanting _to, dissect or even kill Zero again in the process.

It wasn't even a snow job. X was always trying to be helpful, really, in those cases, and that was probably why it worked. He was on their side as much as Zero's. They'd often lost people, and they really did want to solve the mystery. _Zero _wanted the mystery to be solved, so more power to them.

Still, he'd seen it often enough to realize that X leaving after dropping a bombshell like implying that X wouldn't mind falling in love with him wasn't normal. Normally, when X dropped a bombshell he was always trying to do it gently, and make sure people were okay afterwards. He wouldn't have used it as heavy artillery unless he was trying to deal with something else. Like trying to make very sure Zero knew that X was ok with what had happened. Very ok.

X had revealed something like that about himself, a vulnerability like that, and it didn't matter to him, his own feelings and the risk of being rejected didn't matter to him, not compared to Zero's feelings. To making sure someone was okay, even a monster.

Zero would already have laid down his life for X. Obviously. It wasn't as though he wouldn't come back, and twice now, it was Sigma that brought him back here, X that fed him and brought him back to... gave him sanity. This body he hated was barely any price at all, to preserve his chance to escape the hunger. The substitute nanites just didn't feel the way X's did, didn't taste the same. It would take even longer now for them to find out if they weren't enough, if they were still missing something. Because X had fed him, and Zero's systems had done... _something_, and X still wanted to protect him. Was still willing to feed him.

Was there anything he _wouldn't _do, to preserve that?

A monster like him?


	5. Chapter 5

_A little over 17,000 words into this fic, I found myself really wanting to just write 'insert edited events of Day of Sigma OVA here.' Ah, the perils of fanfic. Well, it's not like recapping isn't necessary in original work, it's just a matter of how much and when. I really, really should have gone with X's perspective and done the action scene, it's just that Signas volunteered (and X didn't want to act out attacking Sigma for the writer), and the scene… Well, saying that it was too dramatic and awesome for the fic reflects sadly on the fic, but I'm going for more survival horror here._

* * *

"Remind me again why I'm doing this?" Zero wondered, hefting the beam saber hilt he'd been given.

"It's hard to argue with Sigma sometimes," X said cheerfully, after he finished the last set of his own virtual targets. There wasn't enough space in the room to challenge X's aim, of course, so X had set up a 3-d projector and wasn't putting any power into his shots, lest he set off the explosives in the walls.

"Apparently it runs in the family," Zero muttered.

"Hmm?"

"Nothing." Was X just being modest about the fact people who argued with him rarely won? Or was it that X really didn't think in terms of winning.

"I'm surprised, though. He's never wanted me to learn how to fight. It's almost sweet," X confided in him, quietly. "He always wanted to help the poor irregulars, from the moment he heard about the first one. If anything runs in the family, he's the one who shows it." X's family was famous for two things: robotics genius, which X demonstrated, at least by the standards of 21XX, and heroism.

"Yeah." Mega Man had captured robots that had been reprogrammed to the side of evil, and Sigma was the one who had brought Zero in, not once but twice. Now this beam saber? Letting him train with the one weapon Case Zero knew how to use, meaning it might carry over?

The trust… it humbled him.

"He's never wanted me to take the field. Although he's modeled much more after Dr. Cain than me. The hair." Or lack thereof. "Dr. Cain was rather strong, before he became ill." X thought that was it, really. "He doesn't want anything to happen to either of us." Or anyone else, but especially them. X doubted Dr. Cain had much more than five years left, at this point. He didn't know how Sigma would handle it. "He's registered as Sigma Cain." Not Light. Every reploid was based on X's plans, and at least in part on his designs. "At least he calls me Dad, or he called me that before he founded the hunters." And grew up.

"So why do you think he told me, of all people, to train you?" Zero wondered, beam saber projection (enough light to show where the blade would be in a real one, not enough to actually singe anything) sweeping through the air slowly and thoughtfully, figuring out what worked. If Sigma had been there, he would have identified several of the moves 'Case Zero' had used. Buried memories or simply the same underlying thought process and personality in action?

"Well, I have to spend time with you in any case," since even if creating nanites with non-standard metal components like X's had kept Zero from getting hungry, Zero still started to get a little antsy if no one came near him for several hours. No one wanted Zero's survival programming to start to act up, and X had extensive antivirus protection developed by Dr. Light to guard against Dr. Wily's roboinfluenza. The zombie virus had only managed to take over reploids whose antivirus protections stopped working when they died, so X should be doubly safe. In theory, it should be safe for others to come in here, as long as Zero didn't get overridden by his survival programming, but even Case Zero had never attacked X to kill. "And this way he doesn't have to pull anyone off duty. I'm not exactly standard." So he couldn't just be lumped in with the rest of the rookies.

"Right now, things are very disorganized. So many reploids were constructed so quickly that even now that order has been restored, we're still constantly finding irregulars that were either missed until now," vanished into the wastes and presumed zombified, "or were built with some defect that took awhile to become apparent." Even hunters like Vile, formerly known as Vava, were becoming irrational suddenly. "And the alternative to you, or _someone_ at least, training me is that I keep trying to train myself, and as you can see I've already got a lot of bad habits." From trying to figure it out from books and target practice, without someone with real practice looking over his shoulder. Zero didn't have practice, at least not that he consciously remembered, but he had very good instincts. Programming. Most of the books were written with humans and their physical limitations, as opposed to reploids, (even androids like X had limitations) in mind.

Actually, X thought part of the reason Sigma had set this up was to give them a reason to spend more time together, doing something that scientists wouldn't really care about. Aside from the hunter guard and those interested in Zero's combat capabilities, they were alone while they trained. Or as alone as they were ever going to be, barring Zero being 'cured' or some other miracle. This was also letting Zero get some exercise, have a little fun. Giving him something to think about besides his imprisonment and the many barriers to his release.

* * *

"He learns fast," Zero offered.

"Hm." Sigma's noise was non-committal and face blank, watching footage of X's practice. "Of course he does."

"Is he really going to be going out there?" Doing field operations, the way he wanted to? Spending more time away from Zero?

"He's still too weak."

Zero turned his head to the side to look at him through the window doubtfully. "Really?"

"There's much more than physical strength in play here." X was the strongest in existence, bar one. And, with his programming, that infinite potential? His capacity to evolve would pave the way for reploid evolution. Forcing him… causing him to grow stronger allowed researchers, like X himself, to gather better test data, making them all stronger. "Sometimes, it's necessary to attack, even to kill, in order to prevent more suffering down the line. As long as he wants to fight without killing, he'll be a liability." To anyone who was counting on him to do what was necessary. "He'll grow strong, but he'll never have what it takes to be a warrior. Not on his own." He turned to Zero. "I've seen how fond of him you are. I'm trusting you to take care of him."

Until he wasn't needed anymore.

"…Me?" Zero seemed touched, like it was some kind of honor for him to protect the blind Lightbot. X might be useful, yes, for his capacity to evolve and as a symbol to sway the fool humans, cause them to support reploids, but he was still a trusting fool.

How fortunate, both for Sigma and for him. If X were more perceptive, he might be an actual danger. No, X had too much potential to be useful to eliminate just yet. If Zero wanted to keep him, then X's greatest value would be as a trophy, but that was for later.

"Don't worry. Obviously you can't protect him in the field as long as you're imprisoned here. Hopefully he'll return to the lab full-time after a handful of missions." Or other things would change. Imprisoning the greatest of their kind, the one who would lead them to the future, as a lab rat? Trying to find a way to take away Dr. Wily's gift to them all?

X was still useful, but Commander Sigma, the hero and leader of the Irregular Hunters, had no more reason to remain here. With this, all the groundwork had been laid.

That was a relief, because it was growing harder to tolerate the presence of humans, to pretend to be a mere mortal and hide his true nature and goals. The gift they had been given, the truth it had shown him.

It was almost time now, to begin the war that would create Elysium, the abode of the virtuous dead, a world clensed of all the unworthy, human scum.

* * *

X's first mission was a disaster, or X considered it that way, anyway. If Zero hadn't known that Sigma (like him) wanted X to stay in the lab, where it was safe, he would have thought that the whole thing was really blown out of proportion in a way that was unfair to X, which was unlike Sigma.

The earthquake hit a few days later, or at least Zero had assumed it was an earthquake until the guards in the observation room heard something over the intercom and everyone was suddenly on red alert. His usual guards and observer were replaced by someone very serious who wasn't telling him anything, or even turning on the intercom so he could ask what was going on.

He got _really _worried when the second day passed without X visiting, bringing Zero his nanites to supplement the e-cans with their latest nutrient batch that were kept in the room so Zero could use them right away if he needed to feed. Zero was well aware of what would happen if he went hungry long enough. X couldn't be dead, could he? What could be serious enough to keep him away this long? What could possibly be worse than the prospect of Zero going back to the way he had been… before?

Half the city getting blown up and X nearly dying, apparently.

"What?!" Zero demanded, not with shock but with anger. It surprised him: that anger should be directed at himself, but the raw will to kill there, when someone threatened X?

"Don't worry," the unfamiliar reploid reassured him. "No one seriously believes that you had anything to do with this. Besides the obvious." Otherwise someone would have come to interrogate him already, instead of just going over the tapes. Of course, fear of infection had likely played a role there.

The zombie plague really was a magnificent distraction. As was Zero himself, most likely. Just not a distraction alone…

"So Sigma was infected? How? He beat me, didn't he?"

"That may have been why. In hindsight, it makes perfect sense. Anyone capable of defeating you would have been a valuable prize. Given that we still can't reproduce even your known conventional capabilities any more than we can Uncl- X's," while he was on duty, "they'd have to be smart, to pull it off. That was Case Zero's one weakness. The cost of X's self-configuration system and infinite potential is a latency period even longer than a human's, and whoever is responsible for this didn't want to wait long enough for you to develop in a capsule." Or that was the most likely scenario, but he knew better than to make assumptions. "So, you would need a strategist, someone to do the thinking for you, and help you learn while you developed. I should have realized it before, even if I did have other projects." What had happened to X recently indicated that Zero had been designed with the thought that he would have intelligent companionship, with decision-making capability that needed to be influenced. Since the zombies killed anyone who wasn't infected, that should have implied that there was a category of infectee, besides or as well as Zero himself, which didn't lose the ability to think.

"Uncle?"

Oh? He went through his memory files. "Forgive me for not introducing myself. I'm Signas. Dr. Cain constructed me as a data analysis specialist, a detective, while he and the council were trying to use conventional methods," tracking purchases and so on, "to find your builder after you started to be revived. I've been in here before," the observation booth, "but we haven't been introduced." He'd just assumed Zero would know who he was.

He really wasn't on top of his game, was he? It was too personal.

"I know who you are, X mentioned you," Zero assured him. "I just didn't know what you looked like. I thought you'd be smaller, for some reason."

"Well, I'm not a combat or industrial model, but I do need a lot of extra equipment." Signas patted his chest, smiling at the joke. "This bulk's all brain." Instead of muscle, like his older brother. "Or extra processing power, anyway. We couldn't run statistical analysis on conventional computer systems when we didn't know what your builder was watching." It turned out it was a good thing they hadn't assumed the irregular hunter computers were secure. Or their complex. If Signas hadn't been at the council complex all the time, he might have been taken as well. Signas hoped that the analysis capability he had might provide _some _self-analysis capability, but the fact he downloaded data so often had forced him to become very aware that no, reploids didn't necessarily have X's automatic immunity. At least no one had figured out how to overcome what they had but Zero's creator.

For now.

He'd just thought spyware was the worst he'd have to worry about, as long as he didn't go anywhere risky and stayed fairly close to a teleporter room. The council complex was an obvious target as well, and Signas knew that he was big, heavy, slow, and far from strong or agile.

Well, "I'd shake your hand," to complete the introduction, "but we don't know what the initial infection vector was." Zero's visitors were going to have to be further restricted. It was only recently that some people had become fairly casual about going inside the room with him, following X and Sigma's lead. Signas knew X's reason: on top of the fact it was unfair to blame an innocent, the council had always been worried that Case Zero would remember what happened now, retain this intelligence if it got loose again. However, that was a two-edged sword that could work to their advantage as easily as their disadvantage. The more memories Case Zero had of positive interaction, trust and friendship, the more likely that it would cease to be hostile. In fact, if it really _did _become intelligent, then if the complex wasn't too bad a place to live and it really was motivated by hunger, then the intelligent thing for it to do would be to turn itself in so it didn't have to starve. They'd all thought Sigma's reason was the same. Now, however, _all _of Sigma's policies and actions had to be gone over, trying to figure this out.

Fortunately, Signas had spare brainpower for that. It was inexcusable that Zero had been allowed to slip through the cracks for so long, even if all the hunter leadership, the people who should have thought of something like that, were unavailable.

One way or another.

"We know how Sigma's spreading it, though." Unless there were additional methods. "There were bitemarks on X when he was found. Or at least remnants of them." Repair nanites would fix that kind of thing automatically, hiding the evidence. They really did need to worry about moles. The question wasn't if Sigma had left moles behind, the questions were who and how many.

"What?!" Zero said again, eyes flashing red, and this time there was fury mixed with the surprise.

"_So that's what X was talking about when he noted territoriality_," Signas thought. He'd scanned in X's personal notes first thing. X had a searchable memory and perfect recall, perhaps to an extent even greater than Signas, but he still took notes not just for the benefit of other people but as an aid to brainstorming. The notebooks doubled as dream journals, which was still an odd thought. Signas had read that dreams normally involved waking up without clothing and so on, but apparently some humans could learn to gain control of the capability, so why was he surprised that X had?

The definition of territorial was not wanting intruders in the person or animal's territory, and Zero didn't really seem bothered by people coming into his containment area (aka cell), unless they were rude or made him feel like a lab rat or a criminal, and those were entirely different issues. In fact, Zero had clearly been _programmed _to have people in his personal space almost constantly. His level of agitation increased when he went without human (or reploid, usually) contact or conversation for more than a few hours, X had also noted.

So it wasn't his personal space that Zero was territorial about, then? "_An attachment to individuals, not to location_." And of course this protective instinct would center on X, who was the closest to him and had fed Zero in the way he was designed to feed twice. Without dying of it. X had reported that Zero had kept the zombies away from him during the initial uprising, as well.

The trouble with X, and Dr. Cain to a degree, now that he was beginning to fade, was that they'd worked out a shorthand that was practically a private language. Mostly that wasn't a problem, because most reploid scientific terminology was based on the words they'd picked to refer to things with, but they could say a single word, like 'territoriality' in context and the other one, who knew how they thought and most of what they'd observed, could go from there and figure out what was actually being suggested. Apparently that was common in long-term partnerships, Signas had found. Since he was a detective the council investigators had insisted on watching a lot of movies with him, or finding a way for him to download the files if there wasn't time.

Human methods of bonding and transmission of social mores were interesting. They were much less bossy than reploids, really. It worked by providing examples instead of by verbal instructions/orders. That was often a problem for reploids, who didn't know what they were supposed to be looking for, or in extreme cases that they were supposed to be looking at all, so they thought that humans just expected them to know things when they obviously hadn't been told them. The most important thing in human interaction was _paying attention_. Luckily, Signas had been built for data analysis, so he was curious by default, and he'd very grateful that he was being given the benefit of their years of experience and instruction.

Even the seemingly useless, 'how are you,' was shorthand for this. Seemingly contentless small talk was actually transmitting information on several channels. Testing ability to communicate and ability to disagree without it becoming an argument or real problem, for example.

Obviously, it was better to have co-workers and friends who cared about you than ones that didn't, and when people cared about other people, they paid attention to them. How they were, what their likes and dislikes were, what bothered them, and made efforts to alter their behavior accordingly. The social rules were a mix of things that seemed nonsensical but were actually extremely practical, or had their origin in something practical, and things that were there in order for people to be able to demonstrate that they were 'one of the guys' so everyone knew they were on the same page and didn't have to worry about accidently causing offense or anything. If you knew a group's idiosyncratic behaviors, rules and in-jokes, then that demonstrated that you cared about the group and wanted to be a part of it.

Making the effort and genuinely taking an interest in people were the optimal strategy when it came to dealing with humans, and after he'd figured this out it had become obvious that X clearly knew it. Signas had been focusing on how to create working professional relationships, and getting too closely attached was theoretically a hindrance to that, according to the research he'd done on the subject (just in passing, by his standards), but he did have to wonder.

Machiavelli had written that it was better to be feared than loved, but the _world's _reaction to what had happened to X? X was generally thought of as a doctor and a curiosity, rather than as a public figure or someone powerful. A relic of a more civilized age.

Was it just because X was a symbol already that he'd become the focus, the symbol of what Sigma had just done? That people were reacting to what had happened to him, how wrong it was that Sigma had done this to his own father, more than the city full of people most of them didn't know? A million was a statistic, after all.

So many trains of thought to follow up on, and no way to tell which ones would turn out to be significant. He had to know how people worked, to have any chance of profiling and finding Case Zero's creator. He had to know what normal was to know what the red flags were.

"The security cameras were destroyed, but from what X managed to tell us, he noticed something odd and followed Sigma to the point defense station. It was used to track and destroy falling debris, in the old days." Before reploids and mechanaloid technology had made it possible to travel in space again and get rid of the junk, or at least the most hazardous bits. They were hoping to salvage at least some of it: there were plans to build another space elevator at some point but until then, even with the increase in weather control effectiveness, getting into orbit was hazardous.

"…It wasn't an earthquake, was it."

"He fired the missiles at the city. Fortunately, he didn't sabotage headquarters' defenses first." He could have simply ordered them taken down for maintenance or something. "The view from the upper floors was impressive, apparently, but nothing got through. The rest of the city wasn't so fortunate." Signas grimaced. "And that was also probably deliberate. The missiles were designed to blast apart 20XX spaceworthy alloys. Aside from the buildings that were directly hit, most of the casualties were due to shrapnel. Casualties in both races were approximately even in number, but the vast majority of fatalities were human." Not only were the humans not wearing armor, most piercing wounds were just inconveniences to reploids. That was part of why Sigma had wanted something like the beam saber: how much damage buster fire would do to irregulars was impossible to predict, in the old days when they had been misbuilts. If there was something wrong with their armor or surge protection, even a low-power shot could kill them.

He'd wanted something that could be used at close range, once he'd gotten a good look at them. Something that could be used to do more precise, controllable damage, just enough to get them to hold still long enough to be sedated so they could be brought back for repairs.

…he'd also, according to Dr. Cain, kind of wanted a light saber.

His father had wanted to talk about Sigma, trying to grasp what had happened, and Signas had been there, as family and for the information.

He'd heard about his brother. Who hadn't? Since Sigma wasn't interested in the technical side of what Cain Labs did, aside from the practical results, it had been assumed that once the Irregular Hunters were no longer needed, or could be reduced to a small specialist team, he would be given some kind of council office. If he didn't just found something else the way he had the hunters.

If there was such a thing as a born leader, Sigma probably was… Sigma probably had been it.

Dr. Cain and X's first project. Focus of all the world's hopes. Who knew yet how much creations took after their creators (Signas hoped they did, and a lot, because Case Zero was their one clue to its creator), but Dr. Cain had been out there, and found X, in order to save the world, even if everyone forgot that. Learning about Mesozoic plants and creating breeds suited to that climate and the wastes had been a hope, reploids were a reality. And then there was X.

Neither of whom were leaders. They just… did what would help. Did the best they could. Asked if you would do the same. Believed that you could, believed in you.

Sigma hadn't expected the hunters to end up this big. At first it had been something that he went out to do, helping local defense forces who had no idea how to avoid killing a reploid, especially not when it was harder to capture than kill and they were sometimes getting shot at. So he'd started holding training sessions, and when someone needed to take charge that was him.

He was proof that reploids could find their own ways to live, instead of just what they'd been designed for. The ethics of reploid child labor worked oddly. They were generally built to a purpose, with a job, with a wage, that was fairly low-stress and not dangerous, with the option to quit anytime, once they'd saved up for any remodels they wanted or anything like that. Starting with money that was theirs gave them something that was theirs, something they were earning, so it was an incentive to learn how to handle it. The bugs were still getting worked out, but the wording of how X had given up the rights to his technology allowed Cain Labs quite a bit of oversight, and there weren't any major problems so far.

You couldn't learn about reploids without learning about Sigma.

The first of the current generation, the first _reploid_, the leader of the Irregular Hunters, the hero who had captured the red demon twice and fought him back so many times?

Maybe that was part of the reason for the disproportionate focus on X. Sigma doing something like this? It just…

Didn't make any sense, most would have said.

To Signas, it did make sense. Terrible sense. If the virus could change people _this much_, and leave their reasoning capability intact? Leave the memories that had shaped them and leave them acting enough like who they had been to fool friends and family?

Once this sank in, it would make the zombies seem like nothing.

"X tried to stop him?"

"No, he arrived too late to do that. He tried to capture him, but Sigma managed to remove X's buster arm and drained him. Judging from the scorch marks on X's other hand, the design there was close enough to his buster arm's design that he could channel energy through his fingers." Even though his right hand wasn't configured to reshape its outer armor into the inner wall of a buster, the part that generated and contained the blast. "He probably knew he only had one shot, so he went for Sigma's main processor. At that point, Sigma's body self-destructed and X managed to get to a com and call headquarters. Or that's forensics' guess." He grimaced. "X wasn't lucid enough to give a detailed report, and he fell unconscious before a medical copter could get over there." The base's teleport shields had expanded to cover the surrounding area once it registered they were under attack, but not before Sigma's forces (or most of them, hopefully) had teleported out.

"How is he?"

"Still unconscious. I'm not a doctor, and I can't make any promises, but since this is X, the outlook is fairly optimistic, even though Sigma did a number on him. Honestly, if he weren't who he is Dr. Cain would have given up already." And destroyed the body before it could wake up. "However, night has already fallen twice, and no change, so it's not winning. At this point, Dr. Cain's fairly certain X will pull through, but he's not out of the woods yet."

"So he's… in a coma? Asleep?" That word seemed to reassure Zero somehow.

"Right. Or hibernating, technically. X was designed with self-configuration programming. Unlike most of us, his body has the capacity to analyze threats and adapt itself to deal with them. Virus aside, the real problem we're dealing with now is that our parts aren't compatible with him. They've got him pumped full of repair nanites, energy and powders, but he's not doing anything with them. In addition to the buster arm, Sigma also damaged a few key points to keep him from struggling effectively, and X burned out his other arm and half his chest with that attack. An ordinary reploid, well, an ordinary reploid wouldn't have been able to use the attack and would probably have been killed by what Sigma set off, but an ordinary reploid who survived to this point and wasn't infected..." Signas shrugged. Right, what resemblance did X Light have to an ordinary reploid? "If he could use modern parts, he'd be up and about already. There's a lot of processor activity, from what Dr. Cain can tell. Hopefully, that's his systems trying to adapt to the new parts and figure out how to convert them into something usable."

"If he's not still fighting the virus."

"If he's not," Signas agreed. "He could be. Sigma's been scanned, and unlike X, Dr. Cain knows his systems like the back of his hand. There shouldn't have been any mysteries there. If it can hide in him, it can hide in anyone." Actually, it was kind of funny. "From Dr. Light's notes, the reason X's body won't incorporate insecure hardware is to protect him against being reprogrammed. So the fact he can't use them is just proof of his absolute immunity against viruses like this." It was if he got up and walked around without breaking the replacement parts all down and rebuilding them from the ground up that they should consider worrying. "If he doesn't start doing something with them by tomorrow, Dr. Cain's going to have them taken out to make sure they aren't just getting in the way."

Zero nodded, frowning thoughtfully. Signas could tell Zero was trying to think of anything that might help X, and that was why Signas was here, besides informing Zero and analyzing his reaction. "X doesn't have a problem using normal repair nanites, does he?"

"No. Normally, his systems will tell them what to do and leave them alone unless they do something suspicious, like last too long before breaking down." Signas did a search. "Apparently Dr. Light's capsule used nanites as well as a direct connection to monitor his systems and provide aid, especially while he was learning how to run himself. He and Dr. Cain used what he reacted to and what he didn't react to as one of the criteria for designing standard repair nanites, as a safety check." Right, he should look into that research. They'd used X's systems to safety check a few things: if his nanites started destroying others after analysis, there was generally something wrong. His 'antibody response' had been used to refine the criteria for the standard anti-hacking system. "Normally, in fact, he would have examined and done something with them as soon as they were put into his body." It wasn't really a matter of giving orders, repair nanites weren't _that _complex. "In order to make sure they actually were repair nanites." The one foreign kind allowed in X's systems.

"Could I have some of them? Not just because I'm hungry. I can wait." He would. "If the virus is in there, if I had some of the standard nanites taken from X's body, and ones straight from an e-tank, I could try and see if I could tell the difference. The virus disguises itself as ordinary nanites."

"Good thinking."

"And… something's bothering me. X said once that… Sigma disabled his movement control and balance systems, didn't he?"

"Yes. Have you seen that before?"

"When I caught him, after I woke up here but before I started thinking the first time. Apparently the virus targeted his movement control to keep him from struggling or trying to escape."

"…That may be what happened. They were torn up, but Dr. Cain noted it didn't seem like normal bruise trauma." Caused by hitting precise points on the armor: possible, for someone extremely skilled who knew the systems they were dealing with.

"The… other thing it did then was try and make him register me as trustworthy, but Sigma _was _family. X said once that when he fought the virus over some area, he also had to turn off his own impulse control."

"What?" Signas leaned forward. "Explain." X had reported how it affected him and he resisted, but something about how Zero was putting it…

"When the virus tried to make him feel a certain way, he automatically responded by restoring his original feelings. Maybe I'm not talking about impulse control, but… People have to do things they don't want to do." Or refrain from doing things they wanted to do: Zero would know, from the fight to suppress his hunger. "X wouldn't have wanted to attack Sigma: that would have been his original feeling and emotional response."

"You're talking about an infinite loop." Old term, really only metaphorical for reploids. "The virus would have tried to make him not fight Sigma, he would have reinstalled not fighting Sigma… and that would have kept those feelings, and thought process, occupied."

"He couldn't change his mind in order to attack Sigma when the virus was trying to change it? It wouldn't have been safe."

Was this Zero's own intelligence figuring this out or some triggered subconscious knowledge of how it worked? "His anti-hacking features might have kept it in lockdown. If you're right, then how could he have attacked Sigma?" Then Signas realized the answer.

"He would have had to change his anti-virus settings. Anti-hacking. If he's not giving orders to his body, and this is a virus…"

"That's a constant trade-off. The more secure something is, the harder it is to do anything with it." Security and freedom were always inversely correlated. "If he's not testing those nanites, then…" What else wasn't he testing? If he had enabled himself to make changes to an area of his mind under attack, had the virus used that opening in his security? "He still hasn't woken up." It still can't have won. He hit the intercom. "This is Signas, I need a secure line to Dr. Cain." _Now_.


	6. Chapter 6

"We've identified the virus by process of elimination." They'd used a frequency that destroyed standard self-repair nanites (for safety), removed the replacement parts, and drained X's materials reserves completely before refilling them with powders made from scratch and fully examined. Everything that was still there that wasn't one of X's own, highly idiosyncratic nanites had to be virus. "As you can see, it's still clumping at the movement control and balance areas." Which were several small units throughout X's body. Those were areas of concentration, but they were far from the only affected systems. X was saturated with it, except for a handful of key areas.

"You were right," Signas told Zero.

"I wish I wasn't." Not just because this meant X was in real danger, but what if Zero hadn't thought this up? What if he'd had some kind of subconscious knowledge of how this worked all along, and if he'd worked harder to access it, or, or _something_, this wouldn't have happened?

Repair nanites were designed to copy the activities of the ambient nanites, follow the instructions the reploid sent their body. Conventional viruses tricked cells into making more of them, thinking those were valid orders. Little by little, without being detected, the virus had converted the repair nanites into more of itself.

Their efforts to repair X hadn't helped him, but the virus. Who knew the size of the initial infection? Perhaps X had even been on the verge of destroying the last of it when they'd given it countless reinforcements.

"We still have the capsule we found him in."

Signas looked at Dr. Cain. There had to be a reason he hadn't already placed X into it. Ah, yes. "It's a nanite-hardware hybrid without self-configuration capabilities."

Dr. Cain nodded glumly. "It might have them, in order to keep up with X and make sure it would be able to handle anything that went wrong, but I'd still prefer to keep that as a last resort." This amount of virus? If they put X in the capsule and the virus took it over, that would leave X in the clutches of an infected piece of machinery that X's systems wouldn't recognize as a threat. "The problem is how to get the virus out of his system? We can't program nanites to target it without programming them to target _everything. _It's simply too good at camouflage."

"That's not the problem," Zero said, shaking his head. "It's what hap…" He looked between the two of them.

"You have an idea?" Signas asked.

"It's nanites, right? Disguised as materials, too. In a reploid's systems." Wasn't that obvious? Unless they didn't trust him with X, after what happened the last time Zero fed from him directly. If X might be sick enough that he couldn't fight off this virus much longer, what happened if something in Zero's body tried to do something to him? Again?

"You think you can remove all of it?"

"When you were designed to infect?" Signas added.

"If I really was designed to feed from people that were infected, too, then yes. I should be able to get most of it out, at least."

"And then he'd have a chance." Dr. Cain looked at Signas. At the moment, X was simply outnumbered. If they had taken much longer to catch this, then without resources to replace themselves with, the number of X's nanites would have dwindled until there weren't enough to keep the virus out of key areas. Where they clashed, the virus and X's nanites were ripping each other apart, and that was _not _a good idea in the middle of delicate precision parts. X might have redundant storage, the way humans stored memories in multiple cells, so the contents of a single area could be repaired and replaced, but that could only happen as long as _somewhere _there was still an intact copy.

Not to mention that the more confused and damaged his systems were, the less they would be able to check themselves, and the higher and higher the odds the virus would begin to get data past that verification process into even a single area, recognized as valid, and at that point X's own nanites might start carrying the virus' brainwashing to other areas, or fighting among themselves.

"This isn't sleep mode. He's shut down," Dr. Cain realized. "I thought it had to be sleep mode because of all the activity, but that was just self-defense. All of it. He's not writing anything to anywhere: his nanites are adapting but his hardware is read-only. I'm certain of it." With a reploid, he would have been able to tell. X was simply too hard to read, too secure, and that power source of his, well, if they couldn't detect it when it was operating, even though in theory it should be hard to miss, no wonder they'd missed that it was shut off.

Signas looked shocked. "Doesn't that mean that if mental damage occurs, he won't start making additional copies of what was stored in that area?" In other words, permanent brain damage had already happened and was getting worse by the hour?

"For a reploid, that would be true." Dr. Cain shook his head. "But Dr. Light was a genius." And Dr. Cain was not. "If you don't mind, I'd like to start transferring equipment over to your quarters now, Zero." His suggestion certainly couldn't make things any worse than Dr. Cain already had.

"Whatever you need to do is fine." Anything.

Even festoon him with sensors like a Christmas tree. Or pincushion.

* * *

X was sick.

Sigma really had cut his buster arm off, and the other was clearly fried. Zero didn't want to know what it looked like under the false-skin padding: he wished X's armor had been left on so he didn't have to look at it.

He was far too _still_.

Shut down? Reploids slept, they hibernated, they weren't supposed to shut down. A controlled shut down was better than letting their energy run out, fighting desperately to hang on to life, but barely. The odds of revival were slightly better.

Slightly.

The thing was that reploids were meant to be hard to hack. They thought with their nanites as well as their physical systems. If a reploid shut down, if their body didn't make any more nanites, then after awhile, all their nanites would wear out. There would be none left when, or if, power was restored, and only a reploid's own nanites could read their drives or operate any of it. Supplemental repair nanites could follow orders, they couldn't give orders.

Like, for example, the order to turn back on.

It was possible for a reploid's body to be recovered entirely intact, all their memories in there, and yet they would still be dead. There would be no way to bring them back to life.

If the last of X's nanites were destroyed, then the virus would take over. Wipe his drives, install viral programming into the corpse and boot up a mindless zombie. Not X. There would be no more X. They'd even have to destroy the corpse, and Zero shouldn't _want _to eat it. It would be a waste if X _died_, not if he was cremated. Or, if Sigma still had a mind…

Zero shook his head, refusing to think about it. Even that slight movement made one of the medics frown. "Try to refrain from sudden movements." He might dislodge something, or make it go someplace he didn't want it to.

Zero normally would have just apologized, but under the circumstances? "This is too important for so flimsy a setup." If just shaking his head would really dislodge anything, than the medic had better do it again, and do it _right_, because this was X.

"Point taken. Hold still." The medic started tugging on various things. "Tell me if anything hurts," he said, after the fact.

"I'm fine."

"I'll tape this down." That was the only one that had moved more than was probably a good idea. Zero's body was going to be moving, after all, a little give was okay. Better to bend than to break. "How are things on your end?" this medic asked the other one.

"I'm just checking everything over a second time." They'd already had all sorts of monitors on X, searching for something that would help, so all X's attendant needed to do was make sure the move hadn't dislodged anything.

Zero gathered himself. "Can you…" He tried to think of how this would go, one more time. Was there any way it _should _go? He didn't like to think about what he was, but he might remember something important. He had to try. "Is there any reason not to pull him so that he's sitting up?"

"Well, we'd have to secure a few things. Why?"

"Wouldn't biting a foot hanging over the edge work best? That way gravity would assist."

Zero shook his head: no. "That isn't a bad place, but I need to… I can only drain so much before I have to worry about draining his own. I should get them away from the important areas."

"Could you at least avoid X's vital areas on the trial run? We want to make sure that you don't drain his nanites instead of the virus. Do you really have enough control to be so close to his central processor and only get virus?" So many of X's remaining nanites were nearby.

Zero stretched an arm out, trying to picture it, how it would feel. Even if he didn't know what to do, his body should. "I don't want… I know vaguely how this works, normally. I don't want to risk thinking of it as abnormal. I doubt my builder wanted me to cure people. I'm just going to take a drink, like any evening. That's all. And maybe the virus nanites will be little more obedient than the prey's, but that doesn't really matter, either way." They could tell that he was telling himself that. "Or maybe it's almost dead, anyway, and I'm just having a snack. It would only take a little virus to make a ghoul, no reason to leave it there, or bother doing anything special with something that's already dead." He took a deep breath, flexing his fingers, feeling the shape of claws there.

No memories, no, but the rest was so close to the surface. Instinct. How to stalk, how to form claws to punch through some barrier, the movement of sweeping a wing in front of him to block.

The feelings, the responses. Action, reaction.

Imagine finding a random body, when he was hunting and there was time to pause.

Imagine that _some wretched scum had hurt them and he was going to tear them apart! _

No, no, calm. The last thing he wanted to do was scare the medics into calling this off. No clenching his fists, claws extended, and _feeling _them rip open something that gave easier than any reploid should. Feel the ghost of a warm liquid coat his hands, and realize that his body remembered killing humans. Had done enough of it, with this same _anger _in it, that it knew exactly how it went. Like training with the beam saber hilt Sigma gave him, like kata.

He'd have to tell someone this, but later. For now, he wasn't going to shiver.

He was going to stand here, and be calm, and try to think this through, figure out exactly how this was going to go, how to trigger what he wanted his body to do, and wait for the ok.

Was there… did he have it in him to heal?

He could imagine how that would go, yes. Calling virus up from within him, swirling it around them both and into the one he held, instructing it to repair the one that was his. Except more virus was the last thing X needed. However, if he _could _summon it, generate it deliberately, the way this memory seemed to imply, then he could give them samples. Well, they had samples, the question was which virus they would call up. Or was it all the same virus, simply acting differently under different conditions? What had made Sigma and the generals intelligent 'vampires' instead of mindless zombies?

Hell if he knew.

That was a relief, that ignorance, as useful as knowledge would be.

Later.

X was important now.

They let him kneel on the gurney, pull X up onto his lap a bit, set his fangs to that neck. He kept his wings from mantling so that they could get a clear view, but otherwise he just went with it.

Nuzzling (no response was… disturbing), licking (again…), carefully finding the perfect spot, although he knew this neck and the testing was mainly for X's benefit, and biting.

Dead.

A _trap_.

It took every ounce of control he had not to hurl X's body across the room, running for cover. His hands curled into his own arms, claws drawing fluid (for this, he was unarmored) as he managed to lean over the side of the bed before his body expelled the matter.

Threw up.

Ugh, how gross, how _human_.

He had to take deep breaths, to cool down, calm down.

"Zero? Zero, what happened?"

"Apparently," Zero said, swallowing to clear his throat, no, verify that it was clean, "My creator anticipated that someone might try to poison me using a dead body as bait. That, or rig the generator to blow."

"Would you have fallen for it?"

"I don't know. Wasn't I stupid, at first? If I was hungry enough, I guess." Or had it happened before, and he'd learned those panic responses? He hadn't asked for play-by-plays of his battles with the hunters. "I seem to have physical memories, if not conscious ones. Hold on. I'll try again." He told himself that X was alive, just sleeping in there. He just had to cut away the dead wood, remove the virus so that he could spring to life again.

Waiting for someone dead to wake up. In his bed. His.

He set his lips to X's neck again, the purr low enough only the sensors registered it.

Time to wake up.

Time to remove the virus he'd left on the edges of their systems, for them to feed on as they changed. No, if they wanted a meal they were going to have to wake up. He'd feed them, at least once, maybe more since he liked this one, but then they were going to have to learn to hunt for themselves. No, no more hunting, there were plenty of (Sigma had used the word cattle) lesser ones who would be happy to feed him.

Drain, and coax, and tug, signal them to wake… Except the child's nanites attacked his… _this was no child! _

This design, this configuration! He _knew _them!

No, no, not X, he wasn't going to tear apart X! X wasn't his enemy, X was the one that fed him, touched him without fear. The one he'd taught to fight, the one who didn't hate him, the one who explained things and still thought that of course Zero would be able to leave the room someday and… He had to withdraw his fangs to keep from savaging X's neck. The pain centered itself on his forehead, a crystal flashing (teleporting?) into existence, replacing part of his skull to connect directly to his central processor, nearly displacing the chip X and Dr. Cain gave him. He didn't want to give that up! He didn't want to forget how to talk, forget that he didn't have to kill!

* * *

"Internal temperature's still rising."

"He seems to be in pain." Shuddering. A second later, the wings flared out. Dr. Cain still had no idea where those came from. Perhaps they were solid virus constructs? He hoped not. That crystal, too: was it something like X's weapon copy system, or actual teleportion? He hoped it wasn't the latter, not when they had shields up here, and if the enemy could send ornamental wings through teleport shields, then surely they could send bombs. Unless it made a difference, that it was a part of Zero's body?

"Administer the knockout?"

"A little longer."

"The virus is almost all gone." Did they want to risk Zero replacing it? "It's possible that he's trying to resist the urge to infect him."

"A little longer." They needed to know what Zero would do. Dr. Cain had a second control for the knockout. "If the amount of virus begins to rise." Lifesaver's reaction time was certainly faster than his, these days. "Or anything begins to happen to X. Use it then." Not a moment before. The wings, the crystal: they needed to see this, X would want to see this, so they had a chance of figuring out something that could help Zero, save Sigma. Save them all. And X wasn't saved yet: until some of the sensors in his systems reported something, anything like normal activity…

That was when X began to glow.

Zero's eyes weren't open to see that light, not when he was trying to focus on keeping control of himself, vetoing programmed urges, but he did notice that the urge to destroy went away, completely overwhelmed by the urge to lap at X's neck. He didn't know why, but not killing X was a good thing.

The way it had recognized X (as what?) and been determined to destroy him (why?) was atypical and disturbing, but he didn't want to think about that now, and it was hard to think anyway. As X had given himself permission to stop thinking and go back to sleep, Zero gave himself permission to stop thinking and go back to licking. This was odd, he wasn't tasting minerals or nanites but some ambient energy?

This was burning his tongue, but that was what repair nanites were for, and it tasted of X somehow. So he knew X had to be alright, if his presence was this strong.

The way the body shuddered in his arms was not right. Prey might struggle and shiver with sheer terror, but that which was his wasn't supposed to be afraid of him. So he licked, and pet the arms that curled around him, liking the way they burned. The sensation forced him to pay attention to it.

He almost went to sleep, because he was full now and it was daytime, so he should be hibernating now, systems adapting based on the night's data, but the burning kept him awake. That was useful, he wanted to stay awake until he was sure X was alright, even if it was becoming even harder to think.

"X? X!" Dr. Cain turned the com up.

The body in Zero's arms shuddered again, uncurling from around him a bit. X blinked when he saw his arm, wrapped around Zero.

Blue and white and mother-of-pearl.

And fire.

No, lightning, arcs of energy that somehow aped solidity. "What?" X whispered, lost. What was this? Was he some kind of ghost? No, he knew that he wasn't dead, and something about that thought made him shudder again. What had just happen-No, no, he didn't want to know, he wanted to forget and be _normal _again.

So he did.

With that, he became tired as well, and the way Zero nuzzled his neck was soothing and the fangs were solid, real, an anchor like the arms around him.

So he went to sleep.

When Dr. Cain saw that, he tried, "Zero? Zero?"

One of the medics screwed up their courage and tugged on his arm.

Eyes black from rim to rim flashed open, Zero withdrew his fangs long enough to _snarl_ and the medic was only allowed to live because he quailed back, demonstrating proper fear.

Satisfied, Zero closed those eyes, slid his fangs back in, settled his hair around X and when everything else was comfortable closed his wings around them with an audible snap, knocking the last panels against each other to make it clear that the Master was not at home to needy fledglings.

If they wanted X, then they should go find their _own _tasty prey, damn it.

* * *

_Almost every spice humans use to flavor food other than sugar or salt is a poison. That we evolved some degree of immunity to, and then decided we liked the sensation of it trying to kill us. Eg. the spicyness of peppers? Feel the burn of it trying to murder your nerve cells. Nutmeg? It's hallucinogenic in larger doses than we put in food._

_Pattern-finding machines like the human brain notice when things occur in proximity and conclude that those things are connected more than they really should (correlation does not equal causation). So Zero probably is going to associate the damage caused by X's power source with feeling full, and thus conclude it's a good 'flavor.' Instead of avoiding the toxin (don't eat this), the presence of the toxin instead indicates prey with adequate nutrients (eat this). _

_While X has now gotten _very, very good _at murdering virus nanites thanks to the infinite potential system, meaning Zero got hit with a few orders of magnitude more of that radiation this time than when he fed on X, it's not doing significant damage to Zero. Dr. Wily didn't want Duo to be able to OHKO his greatest creation: think how soap is basically liquid murder, but we're fine provided it's applied externally and washed off quickly because we've got a meat shield in the form of layers of dead skill cells it'd have to eat through before it gets anywhere vital. The perks of being a multi-cellular organism instead of a brutally-ripped-apart bacterium or virus. We have reserves. _

_Maybe alcohol'd be an even better metaphor: apparently liking the sensation of being mentally impaired enough to learn to like the taste of the poison that produces it is pretty darn common._

_This came up in the _Sector General _series: hudlar were keeling over from low blood sugar since the hospital food was so damn boring that they were forgetting to eat. The doctors found it counterintuitive that the solution to this was to add trace amounts of _toxins?! _And then someone 'corrected' the amount of nutmeg in a dish by moving the decimal point around._

_The process of acquiring a taste for something is the brain going 'ok, this is definitely poison, but it hasn't killed me yet, so whatever.' You can also make bitter things less bitter by adding sugar and fat to 'mask the bitter taste' by convincing the brain that the thing you're eating has enough calories to be worth the risk of that dose of poison. This is how coffee with cream and sugar works._


	7. Chapter 7

_A problem with fast zombies is that surviving an apocalypse of that type would be very easy: hole up with a good book and wait a bit. Of course, that tactic makes for boring games and movies._

_Running around like that is not cheap or easy: most people tend to think that humans are weak and have poor endurance compared to other animals, but actually, we can do quite a few things that horses, for example, would drop down dead if they tried, and zombies are sick, remember._

_Defeating the immune system of the host means a whole slew of other diseases are going to be setting up shop and fighting over who gets to loot how much of the corpse. _

_The life expectancy of a fast zombie is that of someone with full-blown AIDs running a marathon in a septic tank after being bitten by a komodo dragon. With several remora fish hanging on to them under the surface. The zombies will not remain functional for very long before being killed by secondary infections, and they'd spend most of their undeath too sick to move. _

_You know War of the Worlds? 'And thus, the day was saved, thanks to the common cold.' Seriously, we won't need to kill the zombies, our usual sparring partners will be happy to do it for us. Did you know that the amount of cells in your body that contain DNA other than your own outnumbers the amount of you-cells? Most of them are benign or even symbiotic as long as you're healthy and your personal ecosystem is in balance (antibiotics killing off symbiotes is probably one of the causes of the current diabetes & obesity epidemics), but if the pH of something changes, or the immune system goes down… _

_In case you're wondering why I did a zombie apocalypse fic when I think that trope is pretty fail, I used it here, or Dr. Wily did, _because _it is fail. It's a big, showy, horrifying, riveting, clearly good at capturing the public imagination, _distraction_. On the one hand it's exciting and creates that thrill of danger, and on the other it's clearly pretty easy to counter which breeds overconfidence. While the maverick virus fits a lot of zombie apocalypse criteria, it's different because the virus doesn't kill its hosts and the mavericks can think._

_If the others had figured out the implications of a host/infectee that could think and had feelings that actually mattered early on? Of course, Sigma dropped the right word at the right time to send them on a train of thought away from the important part. No organized force is ever outnumbered by an unorganized force, forget an unorganized force that can't think._

_Dr. Cain's rambling here had more specific relevance to the plotline in the rough draft in this fic, which was kind of 'oh crap, incredibly powerful killer robot – okay, we beat it, but now oh crap, zombies! – oh crap, vampires just _hijacked our entire army capable of fighting them_ – oh goddammit, what is Wily hitting us with_ now?!' _when the next step after mavericks that could think was the X6 nightmares/bringing elf tech into it. Since that got overly complicated (but overly elaborate schemes are a mad scientist thing!), I ripped it out when I revised the fic. I trimmed it a bit, but there isn't enough fic with interaction between Dr. Cain and his kids. The part with X was also the intro to something I cut because two chapters later I had no idea what to have happen next._

* * *

"We've got enough sensor coverage for now, I think." Beyond the stuff in Zero and the passive sensors arrayed around them. "Since the only means we have of making sure the virus is gone is so rough on the system, it's probably best for X to sleep for a few hours, anyway." Dr. Cain let himself fall back in his support chair, closing his eyes for a moment. Just a moment. That was the thing about getting old, getting tired all the time. He couldn't imagine surviving to the age Dr. Light had, let alone being able to build something like X then. No, forget building someone like X at all.

Sigma was a good boy. Or had been, but, "If Zero really can remove the virus… but there's still the mental effects. How likely is it that a reploid would be able to restore their original thought patterns once the virus was gone?" Probably not very, without some assistance. What but the virus could cause change on that level. "We have to learn how all of this works. Reverse engineer Zero, like X, perhaps." He was just thinking aloud now. Just dreaming.

A large hand was carefully placed on his shoulder, either Signas or young Gate. Zero really had given him a fright, hadn't he. He still hadn't had a chance to find out what had happened to Gate's builder. He wondered if Gate had. Quite a few people were still unaccounted for. That could be a hopeful sign. Bodies lay still to be gene scanned, mobile survivors were moving about and assisting with things. Knowing Ivor, he'd be knee-deep in things at some field hospital somewhere. He had been right about the wrenches, although field medics normally used tuning forks these days… Didn't work for X's armor, of course, it dampened too well, it and the padding. So hard to scan, not his fault, of course.

Really, the emplaced sensors falling out barely made a bit of difference. They wouldn't have given them enough information to be sure, anyway. "It appears…"

It took that hand moving a bit, not quite enough to shake him, even gently, but a vibration (Like tuning forks) for him to resume. "It appears that Dr. Light gave X backup technology as well. It must have decided that his current body wasn't repairable. It always puzzled me, how they could send backups in through teleport shields. It does make sense, if X's brother never really _left_. I wondered if backups like that were…" He had to take a few breaths, not because he was short of breath, that was what the respirator was for, but to rest. "Possible for reploids. Androids. Because of the nanites. I shouldn't have underestimated Dr. Light. That… wasn't just a hologram. Nanites. Case Zero never left an afterimage like that, but then it never reappeared in the same place, either. X would have wanted to stay here." Not worry everyone. "That would be a way to get through a teleport shield, wouldn't it? The calculations would take a lot of power."

"Calculations?" The reploid standing beside him asked. Ah, Signas.

So that must be Gate puttering around the equipment. He only heard two people moving, so Lifesaver's drone must have gone still, defaulted to camera. It was a good thing that someone else was recording all this, these days people had the luxury of paperwork and it was so bothersome. "The little unintended consequences of saving the world." People suddenly had time on their hands for useless things. No, not useless, they'd set up the oversight for the sake of reploids, and then to catch Zero's creator.

Safety always meant losing freedom, and freedom meant sacrificing safety. He'd gone out into the wastes, he'd known what he was doing. Without risks like that, he wouldn't have found X.

He'd been up far too late for the past few days, too worried about X and the others to sleep until exhaustion forced him into it. Now he could feel his body demanding sleep once again, and the relief of seeing X alright, coupled with this chair…

"Dr. Cain?"

He opened his eyes again. "Always so formal."

He could tell Signas was smiling in that one side of his mouth curled up way he'd picked up from movies, like the rest of the detectives. The word still made him think of metal detectors. "I am on duty." Then he grew more serious again. "Are you alright?"

"I'm just old. Parts don't function like they used to. Not very good after an all-nighter anymore. X looks like an angel when he's asleep, doesn't he?" Dr. Cain knew without looking. X surely had the right idea.

Signas searched it. "No, not really." X was neither a humanoid with wings or any of the other descriptions his search had turned up. That was strange. Humans criticized themselves for thinking that human-style beauty, and specific types at that, was goodness, but then they imagined benevolent beings looking like _that?_

Dr. Cain smiled. "It's a figure of speech." Signas could figure it out from that.

Ah. "Yes, he does." In the sense of a sleeping child, which were apparently little angels while asleep even if they were little monsters while awake. Dr. Light had designed Rock, and then X, to trigger human instincts to protect and teach instead of xenophobia.

"So many parts in X… we can only build them three times the height and eleventy the volume." In Dr. Light's time, ordering up something that could only be constructed in zero gravity or using lasers or nanites was simple. There were a few techniques mentioned in the notes, taken for granted and he had no idea what they meant. Gas-etched? What gas? How? "Sigma's first body had such limited functions, we were trying to see if we could get him to live at all, and the fewer things in there the fewer that could go wrong. _Everything _was going wrong, X had to supplement his repair nanites half the time, since his could adapt to fix the bugs that came from startup outside a capsule, since we didn't want to lock reploids up for thirty years, and Sigma's couldn't. I suppose that's why he's so casual about feeding Zero like this. Sometimes he'd go to sleep with a cable hooked up, so that he'd know right away if something happened. We used to joke that… like Dr. Light's capsule. Or a mother. Mothers supply their children with antibodies, did you know that? For the first few months, through the milk. So they have a fighting chance."

"The teleport shield?" Signas prompted, gently, to move him away from thoughts of Sigma.

"We already knew they could be gotten through, there was a rogue Wilybot in the stories who helped X's brother sometimes and acted like they weren't there." Dr. Cain had tried to help X find what they could about his family's history.

He chuckled quietly. "An old man telling old stories."

"You're not old."

"Compared to you I'm a fossil." Compared to Dr. Light, he was still quite young, but that was how it was. Wishing he'd been born in the golden age accomplished nothing. Working to bring that age into this one, yes. "Would you like any? Fossils. I have quite a collection. Mainly plants, but a few more exciting things." For a boy, not that Signas was a boy, as recently as he'd been built.

"I'd like you to show them to me sometime." Signas chose those words carefully. He knew that Dr. Cain had made up a will and was adding to it, but that was… He had other things to think about.

"Come by… anytime." No, that wasn't what they had been talking about. "Robot masters and reploids are self-contained. It's easy to tell what's them and what isn't. Humans aren't so clear. It's too easy to define something as the person being teleported that isn't, or leave behind something important."

"That sounds unpleasant."

"Even worse than you think. It's not the air in the lungs," in his case, pushed in by a respirator, "but the thoughts… in your head. A cloud of fuzzy little electric signals goes in, and out comes calm air or a thunderstorm." He shook his head. "During the early days, afterwards, when nothing was safe, some people thought it was worth risking, sometimes." When survivors had to run, and there wasn't any other way. "It never was." Not with earth's electromagnetic field going haywire.

"So that… definition. Subtracting his previous body, adding the replacement one?"

"You're right, that is a good sign."

"Hmm?"

"That he's the same person." Or was it? Dr. Cain shook his head. "I can't even understand the metaphors for it, don't mind me."

"Can you tell anything about someone from their coordinates?"

"Theoretically, perhaps, if you could break the code. Or find it…"

"…Could you edit that way?" No, that was too paranoid. This was a capability X had, one of many. Why worry that whoever was responsible for this could possibly have an improved version? Zero might have the infinite potential system and backup technology, two things that were otherwise exclusive to X, but his builder had just thrown him out here with basic movement programming and hunt subroutines and left everything else up to the beta testing… or that was how it seemed, anyway…

"Theoretically… Mental and physical changes can happen to us by accident. I don't know about you. I don't think so." Too vast, too complicated, the… where to start discovering how? "Dr. Light thought it was safe. For X, and robot masters."

Hopefully for reploids as well. Well, Signas had never noticed any problems.

"X will be alright," Dr. Cain said to himself. He had to be. "How is Zero? Any change?"

"He's still… I believe the word is cooing." Nuzzling over X, making those noises.

"We're still dealing with Case Zero, then. Be careful, all of you. Don't let your guard down."

Murmurs of acknowledgement.

"Has he opened his eyes again?"

"No," Lifesaver reported.

Gate shuddered. He didn't know why _that _gave him the creeps, compared to everything else. He knew they'd put out a call for anyone trained, but seeing _Alia _here…

* * *

X dreamed.

There were many kinds of dreams, he knew, and this was one that was always very wonderful or very terrible. There was no in between. Sometimes it seemed like it at the time, but then he woke up, and it would nag at him (since he knew it had to be one or the other) and turn what had happened over in his head until it clicked into place.

He was certain this one was going to be terrible, but he couldn't put it off. The part of his mind and memories that existed in his nanites had to be reunited with the rest. He couldn't lock those memories of the fight with the virus and the fight with Sigma away.

He had to sort this all out now, before he faced Sigma again. He had to. If Sigma had told the truth, he was the only one who could. Except Zero, but even if Zero were allowed to leave, X intended to keep Zero far, far away from Sigma, as he was now, until X had not only captured him but had the body checked very, very thoroughly for traps, for Sigma had always been clever and he knew so much more about what was truly going on than X did.

That would have to be changed.

Sigma had been lost. He had to face that now, for only if Sigma was lost could he be found.

Although he wanted things to be the way he had thought they were, although he wanted Sigma to be safe and well, that was a lie. Only by facing the truth could it be changed.

So he knelt on the ground to pick up the broken crystal shards and piece them together, clean the taint from them until the picture would be clear, the crystals melt together into a pool that showed his reflection, for it was him.

Reach out, take his own hands, close this pair of eyes and dive. Once upon a time, this had almost been an everyday thing, if time had meaning in that existence. So many things were so confusing, driving. So many truths were so sharp, kind. He hadn't known if he could handle all the facets of them all. Not alone. It would have been nice if this reflection was another him. If he'd been put to sleep with someone else there. Maybe a sister, like his brother had. They could have learned together, grown up together.

But he'd been meant to be himself, not a brother. To learn how to be himself, not half of some whole. It was for the best, really. Even though it had been lonely, sometimes, that was a good thing. He'd learned the value of company, of family. Now he had one, even if it wasn't the one he had expected, and he loved them.

He would keep them safe.

So he would remember.

Sigma, his Sigma, his _son_, who had asked to hold circuit boards when they built mechanaloids, who had looked over their shoulders curiously, who had insisted on being rebuilt_ bald, _of all things, after the treatment had made Dr. Cain's hair fall out.

He'd wanted, they'd wanted, to change this. To fix the sick people. And if he couldn't do that, then they'd keep them from getting sick.

Building and rewiring and sitting on the table while Dr. Cain opened up his leg to show people. Treats to make up for using him as a guinea pig, and he'd said it wasn't fair that X didn't get little toys all the time too. But they'd liked spoiling him.

He remembered.

Those wonderful days.

But the day he drowned in now wasn't one of those days.

On this day, the one who had chosen to fight to protect had brought about destruction and smiled.

On this day, the one X would have given anything to had taken by force what was always his for the asking.

On this day, the darkness had told him its truth, that he would never hurt his son, and it had also been the truth of his own soul.

On this day, in the end, he had longed for nothing but to destroy the wrongness in front of him. It had not been his son. It had been _wrong_.

The light that had come to his hand then: when he opened his eyes, he saw that light scattered everywhere. Wasn't light supposed to be good, and pure? Yet this was the light, the power, the _fury_ that had struck to kill without hesitation, even an enemy that wore his son's face. There should be no such thing as an enemy. Only two people who didn't understand each other yet. There should be no such thing as hatred, only fear, and wasn't all fear of the unknown? Wasn't light supposed to let people see the truth, and with understanding, there was no fear? With understanding could come an end to conflict?

"I am… afraid," he realized. "How very strange." It was beautiful. Blue-white should be a cool color, but he recalled that it was the hottest flame. It looked like it was either so cold it would burn his hand if he touched it, or so hot that next to it he would be frozen and feel that ice in his very support struts.

He couldn't decide if this dream was wonderful or terrible yet. To lose Sigma was terrible, but to know that he was gone, to know the truth was to have the hope of rescuing him, and that thought was wonderful. X thought that with reflection, with time, with his son back, he could remember that day without pain.

"Is that why I haven't woken? Because I'm afraid? Or is the dream not over?" He'd found all the shards, but only of what had happened before he'd shut down. There shouldn't be anything important left. Yes, fighting the virus while waiting to be rescued, and according to his internal clock some time had passed before they'd thought to bring him to Zero, but he'd undone all the damage. There shouldn't be anything important left.

He'd been asleep, nothing could have happened… except dreams.

Fever dreams, dreams of violence, madness and death, crystal-clear water stained red and rainbow-glinting black. Killing, so much killing. Dr. Cain, Sigma (he'd attacked Sigma, how could he attack their son?), Zero…

When he woke up, how much of it would be left behind in his dreams? He was going to have to fight. How many would die, before this was over?


	8. Chapter 8

After Case Zero finished fussing over X, it finally fell asleep. This was apparently a rather complicated matter. There was nudging and tugging him, repositioning him to see how they could fit together the most comfortably, find the best arrangement. There was stroking over almost all the surface of his armor, hopefully just to have touched it and checked it. During that long laborious process he uncurled his wings a few times in order to stretch them, and then settled them around X jealously again when he saw them watching. Dr. Cain had finally let himself fall asleep not long after Case Zero.

They thought it was probably a good sign that his eyes weren't that solid black anymore, but a placid blue. They'd found that Zero's eyes were blue when he was calm, green when he was doing something stressful like talking to people, yellow when there was something really bothering him, and red when he was hungry or furious. Black, and not just the iris and pupil but the white of the eye as well, was new. It had to signify something related to Zero's mental state, the question was what.

He'd snarled at Gate in extreme irritation, but mere annoyance probably wasn't worth such a dramatic change. "Maybe orange?" He was just thinking aloud: there was no evidence Zero used orange for anything, but orange would make sense for just being annoyed. Gate's creator had told Gate to try to demonstrate his emotions more: a mood ring eye system would make that easier. It was hard to program reploids to automatically perform body language movements and make it stick: their systems registered movement and if the conscious mind felt it wasn't in control and didn't like that, it would just delete the programming automatically.

"For irritation? That would make sense, it's between yellow for troubled and red for angry. Do you want me to look through the camera footage to see if any other eye colors occurred in passing?" Signas asked Gate.

"It was just idle speculation." Certainly not worth that amount of work.

"I need practice writing video/image search functions anyway. I can't guarantee results overnight, but I can look into it."

"It doesn't solve any of the immediate questions," Lifesaver pointed out.

"No, but we need to figure out all that we can," Signas reminded him in turn. "Since Gate needs to monitor them, he can't start going over the data the way we are. Brainstorming is a productive use of the time." Signas was the youngest reploid present, but reploids didn't pay attention to age by choice, an interesting aspect of the developing reploid culture. He was glad that it kept them from pointing out that chain of command or not, they knew more about what they were doing than he did, but it might cause as many problems as it sidestepped.

"Orange appears to be feeding," Signas reported two hours after Zero had fallen asleep. "Or rather, feeding from a living reploid."

"Did you search footage from Case Zero's rampages outside the lab as well?" Lifesaver asked him.

"I'm starting to now." He had to adjust his draft program for each different camera. Hopefully he'd eventually refine the program so he didn't have to do that. He really envied X's self-configuration capability. In order for Signas to be able to program and adjust his internal systems like this, they had to be nanite-less hardware: bulky, inefficient, and he had to actually program everything that he couldn't download. Still, as Case Zero demonstrated, that self-configuration programming came with serious drawbacks.

"So the observed cause of orange is feeding from a living android. X, to be even more specific. Perhaps it's the color of satisfactory feeding, which would explain why e-tanks don't trigger it." Or perhaps even physical satisfactions in general. "It's a shame Zero didn't open his eyes the second time he fed from X." Lifesaver remembered that: he'd been the one stuck trying to piece together exactly what had gone on under there from various sources, like what camera coverage they had and infrared.

"Android, reploid…" Gate shrugged. "Same thing. X is only different from us because he was built by Dr. Light with 21XX technology. We'll catch up. I don't have a problem with calling ourselves reploids," to honor the person who had enabled all of them to be built, "but is there really a substantial difference?" Thinking about that, he frowned slightly.

"A wider range of materials, immunity from reprogramming, the ability to be completely shut down and come back to life other than as a zombie…" Lifesaver ticked differences off on his large fingers. Because he was X, they'd considered him revivable instead of dead after Sigma's assault, but a reploid that shut down like that was clinically dead. Sometimes they could be revived, like a human's heart getting restarted, but why did Signas think there was something about Lifesaver's choice of examples?

"I can give you a list, if that would help," Signas offered. "Well, the best list we have." X's systems still weren't fully analyzed: they could only see a certain percentage of them in scans, and when no two scans showed exactly the same thing… "Regardless of future advances, for now X does have substantial physical differences."

"He does. And so does Zero." Gate tapped the worktable thoughtfully. "A wider range of materials, immunity from reprogramming, the ability to shut down and come back to life other than as a zombie…" Proof those traits weren't unique to X, but there was more to it than that, wasn't there?

"Case Zero is not immune to reprogramming," Signas reminded him. "However, you do have a point."

"Dr. Cain hasn't reprogrammed Case Zero, he programmed those chips. Zero's intelligence is enabled by his systems assimilating the chips and using them to think, the way they assimilate and use others' nanites," Gate corrected him. "It's true beyond a shadow of a doubt that Case Zero's design is far superior to any known reploid's. He has only one near-equal. He also has a plethora of traits that, so far, only exist in X." Even if X's self-sufficiency was the polar opposite of a reploid that couldn't exist without other reploids, and well-made reploids at that, to feed off of.

"We already checked over Dr. Cain's companions on the dig very, very thoroughly. We've effectively ruled out the possibility that one of them managed to carry home an unreported souvenir with a copy of X's plans translated into layman's terms, an encyclopedia of 20XX high-level part manufacturing techniques and designs, several chemical factories, a space station…" Well, if they were ticking lists off on their fingers, Signas might as well join in.

"Well, that list would bar almost everyone from creating Case Zero. Isn't there a demographic group that wouldn't have all those difficulties?" Lifesaver wondered, half-rhetorically.

"What?" Sigmas honestly wondered.

Gate was the one who answered. "Well, more than one demographic, if we want to cover all the bases. Time-travelers from the future, a secret government or other conspiracy that preserved antique parts and technology, the inhabitants of a hidden space station or underground bunker somewhere that still has 20XX infrastructure and a mother computer system, _or…" _

Signas didn't want to guess, especially when the others were so far-fetched, just repetitions of common conspiracy theories.

"Or he was built in 20XX. Which would make him, technically, an android."

Signas folded his arms, looking at Lifesaver somewhat sternly. "The obvious counter to that is that Unit Zero hasn't gone through hibernation." Otherwise he'd have fully developed the way X had, not just be starting up.

"What if he was half-completed? Someone found an android shell and decided to see what they could do with it?" Gate loved repair work: he knew he'd jump at the chance for something like that. "They might not have wanted their find to be taken away from them."

"Highly unlikely."

"As unlikely as X surviving all this time? Case Zero obviously has backup technology."

Signas looked from Lifesaver, who had just spoken, to Gate and back. "I thought you two were just brought in recently. You cooked this up together so fast?" Where had they talked about it?

"We were both constructed for heavy repair work," Gate reminded him. Up to and including near-full rebuilds in the field.

"So you met before this happened."

"No, we both just think alike." Lifesaver didn't have the arrogance to call himself a great mind. "We're lucky we were pet projects meant for hospital and research work instead of hunter medics." Not only would they have been indoctrinated if they'd trained here, but Sigma might have taken them with him. "I'm sure you've noticed, but people are very set in their ways here."

Gate nodded firmly in agreement. If anything, Lifesaver had understated the case. "Hopefully some of that was because of Sigma and the virus." And the new officers and staff tricking in would be a little more accepting of different ways to do things soon.

"Everyone approaches things from the same angles." Like Lifesaver was the one talking to drones. "While Dr. Cain and X may have literally written the book on reploid design and medical concerns, quoting them isn't the answer to all problems." Or using the by-the-book diagnostic methods.

"No one's willing to do anything risky. It's perfectly understandable, since they are the Irregular Hunters and experimenting with drastically new designs risks the creation of irregulars, but first zombies and now a second master vampire?" It was ridiculous. Of course they needed new designs, they needed to find means of protecting people and copying X's immunity.

"And then there's the crystal on Zero's forehead."

"The crystal?" Signas frowned at Lifesaver. Holding back evidence until now? "This is the first I've heard about the crystal being important. Does it have some unusual function?"

"Yes. At least one. It was only visible briefly." But Lifesaver had been taking camera input and he'd paid _very _close attention to what was going on during those key moments. "Take a look at it while Case Zero was suffering that bout of pain and seemed to be fighting with himself to resist some instinct."

There seemed to be more light reflecting from it than there should be. More light in certain areas, erratically. Signas started trying to add those areas and patterns up, make sense of them. "A hidden watermark."

"Watermark?" Gate looked at Lifesaver.

"I thought the term for putting an initial on your property was a monogram?" Lifesaver asked. Had Signas used an obscure specific term like watermark for a reason?

"Subtle, but there, appearing when looked at properly. Watermark seemed an appropriate word."

"There's a hidden message?" Gate had been watching the cameras now, not pulling up past footage.

"Watermarks and monograms are both something like a signature," Signas explained to Gate. "An artist signing their work. Or perhaps this is more of a brand."

"A creator of androids on the level of Dr. Light who signs their work with a W. Is the detective going to tell me it's all circumstantial evidence?" Lifesaver clearly thought the idea was ridiculous.

"We can't report this yet. We need to wait for X and Dr. Cain."

"Why? To hold our hands?"

"No. Because this is the Irregular Hunter facility and they are in command here. Something like this needs to be handled very, very carefully."

"Why?"

"Have either of you done any research into the legends?" As opposed to the general history database.

"I'm calling some of it up now," Lifesaver said: he and Signas were both much better at connecting to systems than other reploids.

"Dr. Wily was a madman with a very distinctive style. He used puppets to divert attention from himself that would pretend to be behind whatever he was trying at the moment." They all knew who Signas was talking about: Zero, and now Sigma. "But he was insane, and his plans all ended up with the same setup in the end. Mega Man fighting the robot masters. If we don't leak your speculation, and Sigma ends up using something like that instead of his usual tactics," hunter standard operating procedure was many on one, for example, not one-on-one fights. It was safer that way. "That would almost prove it, wouldn't it?"

"Robot masters, master vampires…" Gate started to point something out when they heard something. It was a sound almost more felt than heard, the slight vibration of the ground caused by extremely loud noises.

They rushed to the soundproofed window, except for Lifesaver who diverted his focus back to the camera input.

The shelf-loaded with e-cans had toppled over: hit by a wing, if Signas was any judge. One of them rolled close enough to the table that Zero could lean down and pick it up and hand it to X, who was looking at him a little curiously. "Sorry," Zero was saying.

"For knocking over the shelf?" X asked. "It's interesting that you can control your wings like that, but it didn't seem like something you would do."

"I had to try to feel, not think, to get the virus out of you." The reploid (android?) grimaced.

"I'm sorry you had to do that, but I'm very thankful that you did," X said. "I know how important it is to you to be in control of yourself."

"It's my fault, isn't it? That this happened to you, and to Sigma."

"We don't know that," X pointed out. "Sigma may have been targeted because he defeated you, but you may not have been the one who infected him. Anyone who could build you could certainly build ordinary reploids that would attract less attention as well."

Signas sighed. As though they weren't already worried about infiltrators.

"We don't even know that it's the same strain," X continued, trying to reassure Zero by laying out possibilities that were anything but reassuring to the doctors. At least drinking the e-can made him stop talking.

"It is," Zero said glumly. "The trigger is that you and Sigma were worthy and the ones I killed so easily weren't."

"Worthy?" X wondered.

"To be by my side. Like the hunters. An army." Zero looked more and more disgruntled as he spoke. He didn't want something like that: how dare someone involve him in their bullshit, make him partially responsible for it? This was his body, damn it!

"Sigma's comrades in arms." X closed his eyes. "If they're killed, do they become unworthy?"

Zero looked as confused as the rest of them. "The back-up technology," X explained. "If they have access to it… If Sigma isn't dead."

"He isn't," Signas said over the intercom. "They're flaunting it."

"I see," X said with a sigh of relief. "Of course, if they can think already, then making them stop is not going to be as easy as giving them a chip that will help them think." To make them stop killing, like Zero. "My systems are clean of the virus, but I should stay away from humans and anyone with weak shielding for at least a week," he told Signas. "Something happened with my power supply during Sigma's assault: that was why I had to shut it down afterwards. Then it acted up again when I restarted. I don't _think _I'm radioactive, but since my systems just went haywire, I'd appreciate confirmation on that."

Signas turned back towards Dr. Cain to ask him what to do, and also why he'd remained silent the entire time, only to see that he was still asleep.

Gate shrugged helplessly: he'd tried nudging him and the old man had just grumbled. He'd tried saying his name softly and so on, but Dr. Cain hadn't responded and he didn't know anything about how to handle human patients. Dr. Cain was an old, frail man, and Gate hadn't wanted to risk injuring him by doing anything excessive. He might not know human medicine, but the reploid field medic certification course spent one or two sessions putting the fear of god into the applicants to make sure that they didn't think they had any idea what they were doing when it came to human patients and didn't do anything stupid like move them or tug shrapnel out without contacting base for advice. They were shown graphic images of organ rupture, small fountains of blood and large bruises that had resulted from reploids trying to help in the aftermath of attacks (humans could run from the zombies faster than reploids, but they could still get cornered) not knowing how much force they could safely apply.

The absolute _last _thing he wanted to do was accidently kill Dr. Cain trying to wake him up.

* * *

All of that, and there was barely time for X to be debriefed. He had to head out _now_. No, yesterday.

He was glad, X realized, and that frightened him. A century learning himself, how to be himself, and now there was something he was so afraid to remember, to confront?

But Sigma had openly established a base now, a fortress, and the first strike team that went in? Sigma let them see what he made of them. Most of them just became more zombies, more cannon fodder, stalking the grounds like the infected mechanaloids, but the others?

Still able to think, like Sigma. Able to walk unharmed among the hungry dead, able to command them. 'Vampire lords,' like Sigma, like the generals, and they had to be stopped.

It was a very bad idea on many levels to send X out. Not just tactically, but strategically. He was a rookie, not a warrior. A researcher, not a fighter. Studying him would let whoever had him in their possession create more powerful reploids. And if it was possible for him to be infected? Sigma seemed to have some control over the virus, able to determine who kept their mind and who didn't. X and Dr. Cain had speculated about what control Case Zero was supposed to have over the virus. If Zero could make the ghouls remember how to fight properly, make proper use of their systems. With X's ability to control his internal systems, even if he couldn't necessarily translate that into the kind of analysis needed to figure out how to replicate them with modern materials and techniques? If his internal systems included the virus, if he was twisted to the virus' purpose?

It might be almost as bad if he fell into Sigma's hands as if Zero did.

Almost.

But the powers that had been unlocked by those fever dreams? The Nova Strike, the ability to use his generator's raw output to burn away the virus? His offensive capability had increased several hundred percent, he was sure of that.

So this was the infinite potential system. So this was his ability to evolve, to adapt to survive.

To fight. To become a more powerful weapon.

Only if he was pressured, he told himself, touching the dropship's window, seeing himself dimly reflected in it. Only if it was necessary.

Right now it was. To get Sigma back, he told himself. That was why he had to do this. His brother had done it, hadn't he? Without losing himself?

Had X already lost himself? Was… the thing he had encountered in that dream right, that X had become a killer? Was he no longer the person that had woken hoping for peace, the person Dr. Light had hoped he would become?

He shouldn't be so disturbed by a dream, but what part of this wasn't disturbing?

* * *

Zero was trying not to pace.

Not very hard, though. He wasn't allowed armor, and the room wasn't very large, so somehow it was natural to stand on his toes and the balls of his feet, not letting his heels touch the ground as he walked. Less friction that way. Better for running, jumping, pouncing… Not that he was supposed to do any of those things.

Most reploids were much louder than he was, between the hydraulics that let heavy bodies and armor move and the clang of metal boots on floors that were often metal as well, at least in his limited experience. It probably creeped them out that he was so quiet.

He'd tried to care for a moment, but not very hard.

They'd sent X out. X. _His _trainee. Who had just nearly died. Sigma must have let X be trained for some reason, what if this was a trap? No, it had to be, Sigma was no fool.

Well, that was what Zero had said was the reason he was annoyed by X going, when asked. That he thought it was a bad idea. Even though he knew the real reason he _felt _unhappy with it was that his body, the beast inside him, thought X was his. His meal? And shipping him off to Sigma, without Zero's permission? Letting someone else who had already tried to kill him, take him away from Zero, anywhere near X? There were supposed to be possible other ways to feed him now, but X made the hunger go away: He _knew _that X could free him from it. If X died, what if… He didn't want to go back to being something so pathetic, so he'd evolve like the person that made him wanted him to! He refused!

It should have surprised Zero more than it did to realize that he was almost automatically strategizing how to get into the observation booth, kill the watchers, get out of here. Get to where X was, drag him back. Or not. Maybe find someplace with fewer fools who thought they had the right to order X away, keep Zero imprisoned…

Except keeping him imprisoned was necessary and he _knew _that.

Yet still he paced, counting the steps even though he'd already figured out the dimensions of the room. Of his cell. His hair lashed and he could picture it piercing through the observation window to stab one of the guards, paralyzing him the way X had been paralyzed long enough for Zero to feed. He wasn't all that hungry, but he'd probably take a quick drink, make sure he was in optimal condition for killing Sigma, who had chosen to pick a fight with him.

Zero shouldn't think of X as his property. There were the new canisters now, they knew how to make a formula that would keep him from starving. He wasn't dependant on X, X wasn't the difference between starving insanity and pleasant satiation anymore. He didn't need X.

Sigma was a regular reploid, he didn't have all the weird materials Zero did. He shouldn't need to feed from X either, any reploid would do. Yet Sigma'd still drained X, and Zero's fingers, already formed into claws, almost stabbed into his palms. His body just wanted to tear into something that much.

The last thing they needed was him on the loose again while Sigma was doing this. They needed him here to study him, figure out how he'd helped X beat it and see if they could make a cure, or a vaccine. He should stay here and just wait for X to return safely. He was a prisoner, he didn't want to escape and he'd given his word he wouldn't.

He found himself wishing they'd order him out there, to see if he could take control of them himself, but that would be stupid of them. Yet he hoped they did, because otherwise? He owed X, he told himself, although he knew the main reason he felt he had to do something was the hunger, the weird instincts talking. How was he supposed to get out of here, anyway? Oh, he could let himself be destroyed trying to escape, but then he wouldn't have the chips that would let him think. He'd probably kill X himself instead of rescuing him, even though he hadn't the first time.

It wasn't that he'd lost because he wasn't strong enough, he knew as he sat there in the cage. Yes, he was up against an experienced hunter in a ride armor, but he knew ride armor design, he had the infinite potential system. He _should _have come up with something.

He'd lost because he hadn't wanted to win. Win? No. This wasn't practice, this wasn't a game, this wasn't winning and losing. He'd lost because he'd hesitate to _murder someone who was sick_.

He _knew _that it was kill Vile or let others die, let the disease spread. He hadn't chosen to spare him, he just hadn't wanted this hard enough. How could he possibly _want _to kill anyone? Backup technology or no.

So he'd have to hope he was right, that he was truly capable of what he was planning.

* * *

_I went with the idea I've seen around that X's power source is from Duo. Or, in a Gigamix context, the (formerly?) Knight Templar White Giant._

_Dr. Light gave him a roboenza vaccine, but since evil energy existed, and he had the option of giving X a countermeasure… Yes, having alien technology in (his baby) an android as powerful as X could potentially become was a little worrying, but that's what the hibernation was for. _


	9. Chapter 9

"What," was what Zero said flatly, hair starting to flare in a nonexistent wind. Tendrils that, from X's report, were capable of stabbing through a fully armored hunter and delivering what amounted to a neurotoxin. Or was it anything as specialized as that, when it could just be the zombie virus itself?

Lifesaver had wanted it cut, less than twelve hours ago, but not enough to do it himself. Not even with a drone. They were remote platforms, but they were still linked to him: he and Signas were both attempts to give reploids something like the legendary capabilities of robot masters, but they were still both reploids who didn't work that way.

Dr. Cain's notes said that he and X had discussed the possibility like sane people, except they'd wanted to see if there was some way to get pure samples of the stuff out of it somehow. Attempts had involved hairbrushes and a mettaur, to see if Zero pretending it was prey would help, but despite wanting to cooperate Zero also really, really _hadn't _wanted to do something that reminded him of what a freak he was, so they'd made remarkably little headway getting him to reveal his capabilities in controlled circumstances, as opposed to when someone upset him by revealing that he'd killed quite a lot more people and he wanted to curl up and die. That was when the wings showed themselves.

Or, Lifesaver admitted in fairness, when he wanted to save X.

Dr. Wily's creation didn't seem to want to do his creator's bidding.

There was a projector set up: Lifesaver pulled up a clip of Sigma's broadcast of Vile's report, the caged Lightbot.

Eyes suddenly bright red. Wings materializing (or teleporting in) and flaring out hard enough to smash one of the thin metal shelves flat against a wall.

A sudden absence of Case Zero.

Mission accomplished. Mistress Alia would be pleased.

* * *

"Why are these metal?" X wondered, wiping his fingers against the wall in order to get rid of the melted chain that had stuck to them when he pinched off the cuffs. Metal with such a low melting point, at that. "Did he take these from a warehouse door?" It wasn't as though Sigma hadn't known that X had developed the capability to channel plasma through his fingers. There were far better ways of restraining reploids, and these were _Irregular Hunters: _they'd seen what X and Cain had in the lab. Not to mention the effort to develop restraints that could imprison Case Zero. It wasn't like it would have been hard for them to abscond with a few hundred sets of something that it would take X more than a few seconds to get out of: it was the job of the Irregular Hunters to bring reploids in alive for repairs, of course they had field restraints from the beginning.

That cage: was it meant for _animals? _And then bringing him to Sigma in chains, of all the… This was 21XX! They should at _least _have been some kind of ceramic alloy.

True, the cage and chains were supposed to be just an afterthought, purely ornamental: of course Vile had bitten him after the ride armor kicked him around a bit. So two reasons for him to be down for the count, but _really. _Sigma should have known better than this, which was why X hadn't 'waited for the right moment' after being brought to him. Too much chance that the virus hadn't destroyed Sigma's mind enough to make him forget his own standard procedures for the transport and containment of reploids who were currently a little 'confused' and might hurt people.

"I wonder where I can find decent restraints." The Nova Strike might have burned the virus out of their systems… hopefully, anyway, but that wasn't the same thing as undoing how it had hacked their systems.

Or he might have just killed them, and he really, really hoped such an odd kind of EMP hadn't scrambled them too badly to be retrieved from the backup Vile had boasted about intact.

Eyes alighting on Sigma's cape, X wandered over and gave it an experimental tug. No good, at least not for restraining anyone. He should have known that Sigma wouldn't wear anything that wouldn't tear easily so he could get loose if it got caught on something, for instance. They'd watched that movie with Dr. Cain. Of course Sigma was going to be interested in heroes, when his uncle was one.

Tugging the cape away revealed other clothing on Sigma's armrest. X held it up and sighed. "I know it's a fairly normal thing for children to do, but maybe we _shouldn't _have let him watch the _Star Wars_ movies thirty times," he reflected as he dropped a certain iconic outfit that was very much not in Sigma's size and drew Sigma's beam saber. Well, he supposed that outfit explained why Sigma had wanted X chained, specifically. "Field surgery it is."

First, relieving them of their built-in weaponry (they all had enough nanites left even with the virus fried that the stumps healed over, he was glad to see), and then he'd call up their design files and see exactly how much he could remove without too much risk of sending them into shock and fatal shut-down. The more volume he removed, the lower the chances that some part might serve as a virus reservoir.

In theory, the thing to do might be clearing the building or something military like that, but Vile had dumped X's armor and there was a teleport shield around this place, so X couldn't just summon it. If someone survived the energy his generator was putting out long enough to hit him with more than a single shot, he was out of luck, so a large room like this with only three entrances and without much in the way of cover might be as good as he was going to get.

Honestly, he was better off without the armor: it was easier to get the fiberoptics he was using to channel this energy without a buster or having to burn his fingers off through his body's fluid and nanite channels and fake skin than through alloy.

"What I really should be doing is calling for help," he knew, removing another limb, "but that protocol in the virus for valuable assets…" Signas was aware that Sigma must have left people behind in the hunters who were loyal to him, but there was a difference between loyalty and _love_. That was why sending X with _any _backup would have been asking for it: it wasn't just a matter of 'can we find two loyal hunters' as a matter of 'can we make sure that those involved in the selection process aren't doing anything they can think of to make sure we fail?'

A loved one in danger focused the mind incredibly, X thought, looking at Sigma. Reploids were supposed to be unhackable, so how were they going to hack them to _un_brainwashthem? Sigma knew tactics: of _course _there were other carriers of the vampire version out there, in addition to the people they'd fed from. Exactly what kind of infection rate were they looking at? Theoretically exponential, of course, but if they could at least make it harder somehow…

Well, one part of that nightmare was real already, X though, looking down at his hands, all covered in blood. Perhaps he should get Sigma's cape and wrap it around his waist or something, he must look like something out of a horror film. Possibly science fiction, given that he was blood-splattered _and _glowing. The trouble was that this light was his infinite potential system's answer to how to deal with the virus, and he wasn't sure it was as simple as the specific frequency issue (microwaves worked because that frequency excited water molecules). On top of that, without armor? This would work on the people who were actually infected, but if there was anyone kept around for feeding, they wouldn't be as vulnerable, and he needed to incapacitate them before they could blow him up, too.

Still, he thought, Sigma wasn't in any condition to give orders, and hopefully people brainwashed to love him would be more concerned with that than helping the operations of the other mavericks. They still needed to be dealt with, but that should be easier in the confusion of their high command going down.

"And you say-" Dad can't plot, X started to say to Sigma, but he fell silent at the sight of him there on that throne, with that ridiculous face paint. Missing his arms, legs and lower torso: X knew Sigma's design the best, he knew how to take him apart. He knew how to put him back together again, he might have said, but this time? "I will fix you," he promised, and hoped to anything that he could keep it.

Teleportation in a confined space produced a pressure differential, and teleportation produced fairly distinctive energy readings, the materialization blur effect relative to centers of gravity, which led some to believe that teleportation was related to gravity. No one really knew: this was Dr. Wily, who had also invented the cold fusion reaction.

Among a lot of other things, like the roboenza virus, which was starting to look almost like a trial run for, well, this.

Thank goodness it was Zero, he thought when he turned and saw gold hair. Well, no, X realized. He should _not _be relaxing because it was Zero, not when the last time he checked Zero was back at HQ, among an unknown number of saboteurs, who might have activated the failsafes and blown him up in order to release _Case _Zero and hope that helped Sigma somehow.

No armor, though: wings, but no armor. Case Zero had always reappeared wearing armor, and he'd never summoned the wings, probably for the same reason he didn't use his buster or dash boots. He might have figured out how, but that didn't explain the absence of his armor.

The black on his legs: underarmor or the sweatpants X had brought for him since no one deserved to be stuck with the flimsy hospital gowns for weeks at a time?

Red eyes. Whether or not Zero still had the chip, this couldn't be a good sign, not when Sigma and the other vampires' eyes were red. X started to amp up his generator, charging up the new technique.

Sweatpants, definitely sweatpants. That became apparent when Zero jumped over the plasma shot X had thrown from his right hand (still almost burnt off his fingers) in order to slow him down when he started to lunge towards X and tackled him against the wall. Pressed against him like this, ordinary fabric wasn't going to be any defense against a point-blank EMP, so X wasn't worried until the nervous system woven into the surface of his skin recovered from the EMP and he realized that Zero was licking his neck.

This kind of energy specifically acted on the virus. The effect should be _worse _the more virus someone had in their system, and Zero _generated _it. If even X, adapted to handle this kind of power by the infinite potential system, was knocked partially offline, then Zero should have been… that was a _stronger _blast than X had just used to take out a whole room, and hopefully some of the nearby ones!

Maybe someone else would have panicked over how they were going to die as the fangs slid in, but a part of X was happy he hadn't killed Zero and a lot of him was very worried, because his one hope for curing Sigma and the others, or at least making them non-infectious so it would be possible to have them confined until their sanity returned instead of killing them… Well, now he didn't feel very hopeful. If Zero was already unaffected, _and _he was the source of the virus, _and _he had the infinite potential system, then if _X _was the one who programmed Zero, he would have made sure that any adaptations like that made it into the virus.

If Case Zero returned, if there was another outbreak, then even if they stopped this one…

X prodded Zero's chest, hoping he'd move away willingly, noticing almost glumly that he'd found a way to break out of the loop first Zero's feeding and then Sigma's had trapped him in. Well, he'd certainly been very motivated. Clearly Zero's systems were motivated too, to be able to feed from X without getting burned. Infinite potential system versus infinite potential system: that could create a feedback loop that would allow the virus to get stronger ad infinitum, if X didn't watch it.

Zero wrapped his arms around X, pulled him away from the wall so he could get his wings around him, and X wished he'd gotten Sigma's cape. He didn't care about being naked: he was built to chose who he wanted to become, and just because he'd decided on male pronouns to honor his father and older brother (well, when he spoke a language that had gendered pronouns, anyway) didn't mean he'd seen any need to make physical changes. If he was being captured now, though, he'd rather not be naked. That was demeaning, although not as demeaning as the _Star Wars _slave Leia outfit would have been.

It _seemed _as though Zero was just happy to see him (and maybe a little peckish, but X would like to think that Zero was learning to recognize him even when he was like this) since that hair wasn't stabbing him, so after a few seconds X was worried about someone walking in more than anything.

Given all the blood, they'd probably think that Zero was murdering him, come to think of it…

The fangs slid out after Zero got a taste, but when X said "Zero?" hopefully there was no response, other than Zero turning around, spreading his wings and looking over X's shoulder at the room around them.

The only proper response to being flung over Zero's shoulder was demanding to be put down, and when that didn't work, grabbing a wing and twisting it, hopefully uncomfortably. Not all that hard, because there was a difference between using pain to discipline someone who was a little animalistic at the moment (beating animals was not okay) and conveying X's feelings about someone twisting _him _about in a way that Zero would hopefully understand.

X still had the beam saber he'd taken from Sigma, but he was fairly sure that if he drew it to Zero's attention, Zero would try to take it away from him. Zero _liked _beam sabers.

Finally set down next to the throne, X's eyes widened and he was the one to grab Zero after Zero threw what was left of Sigma out of the throne where X had set him carefully, wrapped in the cape to protect his components. It felt a little hypocritical to want to yell at Zero for throwing Sigma around when X had just dismembered him, but even so!

That was when Zero sat down, on the throne, looking unusually regal for a… state of Zero's mind that wouldn't be able to access an internal database to know what a king was, and X started to wonder if he should be worried.

When the wings flapped once and then exploded outwards, solid matter turning into a haze of black fog shot with lightning, a stormcloud filling the room (was this what the lighting on Zero's wings was meant to represent?), X covered his eyes and took a step back, starting to glow again to keep it from landing on his skin and crawling inside his systems.

* * *

_Rock would have had to damage his siblings to bring them home. The Light family is very protective of their children and younger siblings, and I like the idea that X is a medic first, so he knows what kind of damage he can safely do and how, even if the Nova Strike isn't known technology to him yet. Still, he needs to subdue the mavericks before they can be transported to a lab and he can try to fix them._

_Also a reference to Blues dismembering Lightbots to keep them out of trouble in Megamix. _

_I like the idea that the Irregular Hunters were major Star Wars fans before the virus hit. _

_This was going to be the last chapter, but I'm still not happy with the ending, and then the Time Travel fic exploded on me and I've been working on that instead of brainstorming for this. Didn't want to leave you without an update, but hopefully posting this will give me time to come up with something better._


	10. Chapter 10

Black eyes closed, and X could see Zero still, trying to regain his rationality, before they reopened. Back to red, the color of Wily's robots. "How _dare_ you take X?" Zero demanded, fangs extended instead of masquerading as canines.

"He came to us, to try to stop us." Sigma's voice came from the heap next to what was Zero's throne now, as he slowly stood up. Body intact. Backup technology? Had X missed the teleports in this cloud of virus?

"Fair enough," Zero admitted, since fighting back when people attacked them and capturing those people was what hunters did, so he really shouldn't expect anything else of Sigma, "but…" he looked at X. "I can't really _blame _you for wanting a taste, but _he's mine_. As for killing all those other people, knock it off. Come to think of it," Zero said, as though something had just occurred to him that would make this much easier, "just do whatever X tells you to do."

"But we hunger, Master."

Zero knew what that was like, even though he knew it was wrong that they had the hunger in the first place. "You can have _one _to feed you. Each," since one for all of them was ridiculous. "But only one. As for wanting to kill the humans and other reploids, stay away from them." He looked at X: would that work? "Killing… I remember it made the hunger stop for awhile, while I was fighting, but when I'm full I don't _need _to kill anyone." So as long as they weren't left to go hungry? X wouldn't want that, right?

"X is your enemy," Sigma growled, and for Sigma to look at him like that?

"He's not. I know what you're talking about, I realized that when my programming recognized him," Zero admitted. "He's an enemy of my programming and my programmer, but my programmer let me wake up starving and alone, to evolve into a killer. X feeds me. Even without the chip, no, especially without the chip, if I was in a room with X and my programmer, I'd kill him and keep X. I may owe you for bringing me to him, where I'd be fed, twice, but _X is mine_. How many times did you see me feed from him? If I wanted to kill him, I would have that first night, before the chip kicked in!"

Sigma bowed his head. "As long as it was your will, Master, and not some human's programming."

Zero didn't acknowledge Sigma's words, turning to X now that was dealt with. "I thought you were in danger." He frowned. "I'm remembering it right, aren't I? It's a little hard to access the memories I make when I'm not using the chip. The encoding method I came up with on my own isn't as good. At least I'm starting to remember," instead of forgetting everything else as soon as the chip was installed, "but not very well."

"I let myself get captured," X told him. "I'm not one of the Irregular Hunters proper," just in medical, "but capturing people and helping them, so no one else would get hurt… I was hoping that Vile wouldn't know how resistant I really was, and would bring me to Sigma." He asked Zero, "How did you get here?" Not just getting through HQ's teleport shield, but how had he known how to come here? How many of his real capabilities had he unlocked, and how? When?

"You were in danger," Zero said, "or I thought you were. I was telling the truth when I said that I couldn't think of how to use anything like my hair," even when X tried to trigger it to stab that mettaur, "but when I cured you, I realized that it wasn't thinking that would let me call it up. I was programmed to do these things, but I wasn't programmed to think. I had to feel it, to imagine doing certain things and see what that called up. I wanted to go to where Sigma was, and you were there. I couldn't ask if you were alright when I was in that mode, since that part of me doesn't know how to use words." Zero's ability to speak came from the chip they'd installed, not his core programming.

"So you tasted me to check my systems." Alright. "And then you wanted to talk to Sigma?"

"I'm still figuring out how to connect the words, the thinking that's in the chip," X's solution sets, what he'd worked out in hibernation, developing his own internal logic, "with this." Zero waved at the darkness. "There are others I can call out, though. The ones I killed, before. Only the reploids, but…"

X stepped forward, to put his hand on Zero's shoulder. He was glad to see that Zero didn't react negatively to a Lightbot in his personal space, didn't see them as enemies. "That's wonderful," he said, seeing Zero's hope. "You mean their minds are intact in the backup?" Because if they could only be restored as zombies… Perhaps it would be better to let them stay there, for now, until it was possible to restore their minds. Hopefully, someday.

"I can't tell," Zero said, frowning past X.

X turned to see a kneeling reploid. "Master," they said, and prostrated themselves.

Zero nodded, looking relieved. X, well, he tried to be. "You can feed someone," Zero said. Turning to Sigma, he added, "If anyone doesn't have something to feed from yet, I'll bring someone back for them. I don't think X wants you to take more people."

"I'd rather you didn't," X said, wondering how Zero could… Well, he saw things from the perspective of someone who ate, not someone who was eaten. Of course he empathized more with the hungry than with people who deserved more than to be reduced to food. "So you'll surrender?" he asked Sigma.

His first creation looked past him, almost right thought him, to Zero. "Do as X says," Zero told him. "He knows things, like what's best to do. You might not be as stupid as the zombies, but the imperatives are making you think certain ways, _my father's ways_. Do as he says, or I'll do what he did and tear you apart, no matter _how _much fun it is to fight you. Don't make me regret fighting my programming to keep your mind intact."

He'd done that? Was that why Sigma was like this, instead of a zombie? The way Zero must have fought to cure X, and Sigma had told them that Zero almost killed him the first time they fought, before Zero was fed, before the chip, before… When Zero knew nothing but hunger and killing, he'd still wanted to spare someone's life.

* * *

If it was just Dr. Cain here, X would have put his head down on the table and groaned, but Zero was here, and X didn't want to exaggerate his reaction to what Zero just said to him. It wasn't like it was Zero's fault Sigma was intelligent. Well, yes, he had wanted to spare Sigma's mind, but that wasn't something he should feel guilty about. "So_ that's_ why I ended up full of the virus even though I burnt it out of my system before I shut down. It was in the e-tanks the response medics gave me. The e-tanks that everyone's been taking if they needed them." He had to pause before continuing, determined to look on the bright side with Zero here. "Well, I think it's a good time to make up new master copies for reploid and e-tank factories. Gathering up all the existing supplies will help keep them fed."

"Oh dear," was all Dr. Cain could say. "Oh dear. I can't help feeling like we really should have thought of this."

"Except we didn't know that any of the infectees could still think." Sigma did this before he'd even captured Zero that second time. If it was just a zombie virus, then infecting the master nanite batches used to start up newbuilts at factories would have resulted in mindless hungry newbuilts. That would have been obvious. No wonder it hadn't occurred to anyone, really, and since the zombie attacks and Case Zero's assaults caused a lot of Hunter casualties, of course they were tinkering with the e-tanks, coming up with some improvements intended to help people survive. All Sigma would have had to do was find someone to write up convincing paperwork for a new additive to be included in all the existing formulations, and again, it was obvious that the people who took e-tanks weren't turning into zombies.

The zombies that in hindsight were clearly intended to act as a distraction, the vampires with substantial changes to their systems that gave them increased efficiency in exchange for not being able to perform several base processes (rather like animals couldn't perform photosynthesis) and the asymptomatic ones that the vampires fed from. Were there even more possible ways the plague could manifest, like the different symptoms and prognoses of different forms of the Black Death? "Burning the virus out of Sigma and the others may have worked," before Zero restored them from backup _with _the virus, and had no idea if it was possible to do it without, "but it won't undo the brainwashing. If there are tens of thousands of e-cans out there that contain the virus, and just putting some of the virus into a standard can will let it use those nanites to make more of itself, then there are just too many reservoirs and potential reservoirs to keep them from reinfecting themselves." When they were intelligent and they _wanted _the virus back.

"Asking them not to won't work?" Dr. Cain asked, then sighed. "Of course not, they're reploids, not robots. They _might _be obedient with the virus in their systems, but if it's removed, then they'll do what they think is right. Or what the virus made them believe is right." So they'd reinfect themselves, so their bodies would be hosts for the virus, even if they were intellectually aware that they should want to be free.

Free will and self-control, especially impulse control (_not _doing the things he really wanted to do) were two different things, as X became aware during that hibernation. Newbuilts were newbuilts: they might start out with his solution sets available, but there was a difference between a borrowed intellectual understanding of something like 'delayed gratification' and suffering a delay in getting what they wanted willingly, or even savoring the anticipation. The virus _made _them feel certain things: of course that was far more convincing.

"Only the ones that are infected are going to obey when I tell them not to infect any more people," Zero knew. "The virus makes them think it's a good thing, it makes them want it. Not like the hunger, but it's something they'll _want _to spread." At least Zero had the grace to think that was _absolutely insane_. He hated what the virus did to him, how it made him act. Why would anyone _want _to be that mad or pathetic?

"And they'll resent us for trying to say they can't have it," X knew, really wanting to groan.

How were they supposed to quarantine what had to be the majority of the reploid population, since Sigma had laid plenty of groundwork before he struck? Zombies, then vampires: the world would have geared up to fight them, not noticing that all the ordinary, healthy new reploids they were building weren't either.

There weren't facilities that could hold that many reploids, especially as prisoners, and building facilities had all kinds of horrifying historical precedents. If humans became aware that the reploids they talked to might secretly want to kill them?

They might have Sigma locked up for now, along with the other leaders of his Crusade, but even if X removed the virus from his systems again, he couldn't put him back the way he was before. He couldn't _make _him love Dr. Cain. Even with Zero ordering them to obey X, he couldn't make Sigma want to do anything, like remove that face paint and try to… No, it wasn't a matter of remembering how he felt, before the virus. Sigma remembered perfectly well. He just didn't _care_.

Zero was leaning against the wall, wearing sweatpants and a red coat that was clearly not standard issue. Had someone made it for him, as an offering? There wasn't much point in trying to keep him in containment now, and with infectees all over the base? One of the new junior scientists they'd brought in to help with the research had been avoiding Dr. Cain because Sigma made her a vampire during the interview process and it was hard not to kill the human. By now, Alia had all the reploid members of R&D worshipping the ground she walked on, unless X counted.

Sigma left orders for her to raise Signas to vampire level, so they'd have his analysis capabilities on their side, and the vampires wanted all the scientists they could get. Which wasn't all that many: Zero was supposed to wake up after X had already been awake for seventy years. Reploids were a young species, and while some of them were very intelligent there was a difference between genius and experience. The first rising in the morgue had killed about three fourths of the Irregular Hunters' volunteer medical staff, who were there to learn about reploid structure, the problems they could have and how to devise solutions and new systems. Gate and Alia themselves would have died that day if they hadn't left their university's Reploid Engineering program for two different reasons.

No, they couldn't risk Zero going back into containment and Alia ordering Douglas or one of the others to trigger the room's self-destruct to get Zero to revert back to Case Zero, and hopefully rescind his orders, so they could get back to conquering the world, of all things.

When exactly had Dr. Wily built Zero? Hadn't it gotten old by then? X was sick of it already.

"I suppose," X said, trying to look on the bright side, "We're lucky they listen to Zero at all. It's probably because he wanted his creation to be in control, but Zero was released as a configuring system." Practically a baby. Forcing those compulsions on a newbuilt and forcing him to kill… "So we're lucky that you don't have to listen to Sigma." The oldest living reploid, when if it weren't for the chip, Zero wouldn't have known how to talk yet, unless one of the vampire-type taught him. They'd speculated that some of them were sentient so Zero would have advisors, before X had really realized that no, the goal wasn't to have a handful of vampires ruling over unintelligent zombies, but a massive, intelligent opposition motivated by the virus…

Now he put his head down on the table. How were they ever going to deprogram them? Even a handful at a time? When the only people trained in this were humans, and those affected by the virus would want to kill humans, and without the virus in their systems to make them listen to Zero and not act on that wish?

Zero's hand touched his shoulder, although he didn't say anything. He was probably having a harder time thinking of things that would make this seem any better than X was. The touch was still a promise of protection, and company, and that was a good thing. He wasn't alone.

"I'm sorry," was what Zero said, and X could hear his hair shifting, as he shook his head or bowed it.

"You didn't know any more than we did," X told him, and Dr. Cain nodded. Of course, X and Dr. Cain were still _responsible _for the race they had brought into the world, and Zero wasn't the kind to turn his back on the consequences of his existence, of his need to silence the hunger, either. That didn't make this any of their faults, just something they were burdened with. Something they needed to fix.

He was going to have to start wearing his armor on a day-to-day basis, and so was Zero, since they couldn't risk him relapsing to Case Zero. So many things to do, and try to figure out _what _to do, and as he thought he found himself turning to grasp one of the stray locks of Zero's hair, not pulling on it but holding it.

Something deadly, but still golden and beautiful. Something that shouldn't vanish from this world, that had already lost so much.

* * *

_If you think this is horrible, X, I hope you never find out about canon. Where there's no solution to the maverick problem but killing the victims. "You've won the war: Now you must win the peace." Peace is more than a lack of war. _

_This is going to take decades to deal with: the human reaction to there being that many bots that want to murder them, the reploid reaction to their reactions (both infected and not – see X5), and even more iterations of that. The backup tech thing will help: X can point out that killing them _will not work_, so the only solution is going to have to be a peaceful solution._

_What happens next involves a lot of conference tables, and while _Log Horizon _makes that awesome… _

_WilyAI doesn't exist in this continuity – the idea was to create vampire-level mavericks that would look after Zero and do his tech support as necessary instead of keeping something human-based around – but if he did, he'd probably leave the current situation mostly alone. Because the virus is still spreading, the reploid population will continue to expand, meaning more potential mavericks, and even though Zero isn't aware of it, his infinite potential system is working on cracking X. Of course, X is simultaneously evolving better defenses, but Wily thinks his tech is better, obviously. So Zero is doing what Wily should have done: taking out the blue Lightbot _before _trying to conquer the world. People tend to assume that others are like them, so WilyAI would probably miss that Zero genuinely does not care about conquering the world and does not intend to 'get around to it' after he secures the Lightbot and his food supply. _

_Being called the Vampire King in the media as well as by the infectees is not going to help. He's not even in control of his own body, and they want him to be responsible for them? And the fact he can't make them stop hating humans is going to remind him that he couldn't turn the hunger off. He's not going to want anything to do with this, except in the sense of cleaning up his own mess._

_He would feel protective if they were attacked without provocation: Zero might have technical trouble with compassion, but protecting is something fundamental, but that's 'without provocation' and X will probably do a good job preventing that, except for rogue individuals._

_I wanted there to be more menace and hinting at potential Vampire King/Maverick Zero, but Zero wanted nothing to do with that bullshit._


End file.
